Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ixhel was not taught about fear. It was only considered as one of the several distractions from perfect, unthinking obedience. 

When she saw the black-haired angel run Elesh Norn through with a glowing sword, she didn't understand the utter terror that gripped her as her faith cracked like a porcelain plate. She just knew that she wanted to be as far away as possible. So she fled. Away from the fight, away from the core, out to the farthest reaches of New Phyrexia. 

It's been days since then, and she could tell that something went very, very wrong after she left. The presence of Elesh Norn, the one that she'd heard in her head since her creation, had gone silent. The five suns had been replaced with only one. The structure of New Phyrexia had started falling apart, the Hunter's Maze growing into the other spheres, the dross and quicksilver leaking down to the inner core. Most worryingly, the Domini were accelerating the decay, tearing away at their respective domains like starving animals.

Attempts to find Elesh Norn or find Atraxa or escape to another plane had failed. The seedcore was now controlled by a deathly pale uncompleat woman who'd embedded herself into the Realmbreaker. The branches had receded from other planes, and now only tore apart anyone who dared to approach the core. So she started searching for the other praetors, even the traitors, in the hopes that someone could tell her what to do. For days, she only found more devastation, the plane collapsing in on itself. 

Finally, within the creaking, flickering flames of the Great Furnace, she saw a few Phyrexian goblins gathered around a husk. When they fled as she swooped down, she saw what had attracted them: the ravaged remnants of the Hidden One, master of the Great Work. The one praetor that both Atraxa and Elesh warned her against collaborating with, or even talking to. For days, she hoped that her patrons were still watching over her in some way. Now, at the pit of her desperation, she hoped they weren't.

"Praetor Urabrask." She bowed her head respectfully as she landed in front of him. The broken praetor lazily raised his reptilian head to look at her. "I am Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa. I know that you and Elesh are not allies, but I have need of you. New Phyrexia is in shambles, and it needs someone to take control of it in her absence. I'll find someone who can fix your body if you'll just help me-"

"No." 

"What? 

"I said no, kzunk."

The last word ground against Ixhel's ears like sandpaper. Atraxa had never let her learn the slang that aspirants and lesser Phyrexians would throw into their speech. But she knew when she was being insulted. 

"Politics. Power plays. Plotting. I never wanted any of it," Urabrask continued. "I knew my place in the depths of the Furnace, and all I wanted was to not be interfered with. And I'd rather die than further someone else's dream, let alone hers. So piss off, kzunk, and let me die in peace."

At that, he calmly set his head back against the iron floor of the furnace. Ixhel started to tremble. For days she wandered with no direction and no hope, and the only person who could give her orders wouldn't even bother. Her hands gripped her spear, the lone remnant of the authority granted to her by Atraxa. If he wanted to die so badly, she'd gladly speed him on his way.

And then the sound of skittering legs and a familiar giggle stopped her short.

"Really, are you going to let that burnt-out husk get you riled up? You really are a kzunk, Ixhel of Atraxa's brood."

She turned to find the head of Sheoldred smirking at her, looking down at her from an...admittedly unimpressive perch. Her head had been grafted onto one of the mites that would scuttle around the Fair Basilica, one large enough to carry its weight while balancing at the top of a nearby heap of wreckage. The way it gnashed its teeth and hissed, it had no affection for its new rider.

"P-praetor Sheoldred!" The other traitor, albeit one once considered loyal. Their paths crossed at times back when Atraxa had her ferry messages across new Phyrexia. Even now, reduced to a fraction of her former power, she still gave her the same look: a child gazing at a plaything that they don't own yet . "What are you doing here?"

"Same as you: figuring out what to do with this...consolation prize of an empire." She sighed as she looked at the disrepair around her. "I always told that high IQ moron that letting Elesh run the show would ruin everything. A shame that I was right. Taking control of this place over their dead bodies would be so much more satisfying if it was still in mint condition." 

"So...the Mother of Machines is-"

"Dead as dross, yes. For all her talk about unity and harmony, her coalition fell into squabbling at the eleventh hour. Then the uncompleat went and massacred them. I suppose it was inevitable; she never was as strong as she claimed to be."

Ixhel spun her spear to point at Sheoldred, years of loyalty working alongside her reflexes.

"How dare you! She was the Grand Cenobite! Our mother! Don't talk about her death so callously!"

"She was a fraud, and she died knowing she was a fraud." Sheoldred hopped off her perch as the spear stabbed at her, landing on the spear before scuttling up its shaft and up Ixhel's head. "She never wanted a family, you whelp. She wanted minions. That's why I'm still alive, and why Urabrask isn't quite dead. It didn't matter how dangerous we are. She'd rather remake us so we'd be at her beck and call than simply execute us."

A grumble and a puff of steam interrupted her. Ixhel paused her attempts to pull Sheoldred off of her to glance at Urabrask, who had once again raised his head.

"Oh, I'm sorry, dear Urabrask. Was I disturbing your noble, dramatic death scene? Go ahead and die, don't wait on my account."

Another grumble.

"Speak up, I can't hear you over your fire fizzling out." Sheoldred leered at him. Ixhel, the parasite on her head momentarily forgotten, leaned in closer to Urabrask, trying to hear the message that he thought worth sharing.

"You have the experience for it. Being at her beck and call," he finally muttered at an audible volume. Ixhel felt the mite's legs clench, digging into her skull. She winced, and once again tried to pull the praetor off of her, but a sudden wave of weakness stopped her, Sheoldred's cold fury radiating as magical plague.

"And what is that supposed to mean, heretic?" Her voice came out cold and brittle, biting on every word.

"It means that the Core Augur talks too much when haggles for blightsteel."

Sheoldred pounced at Urabrask in a rage, only to be caught by Ixhel, shaking off the praetor's influence. Both Sheoldred and her bonded mite snarled at her, struggling to wrench herself from her grip. The necrotic energy once again pulsed from her, nearly weakening Ixhel enough for her to break from her grasp. For a moment, she recalled the last worthy foe she fought: the thane Geth, the contract-maker, the heavy-clawed bruiser who broke her ego when he couldn't break her body. She still beat him. And this scrabbling thin-skinned bug in her hands wasn't nearly as dangerous.

She flung the praetor into the air and, with a flick of her copper-ivory wings, batted her across the floor.

"Stop! Praetor or not, I will toss you into the furnace if you keep acting like a spoiled brat! You're what's left of the great praetors of New Phyrexia! The plane's dying! Do something about it or go crawl into your dross pits."

Sheoldred scowled as she shakily rose up, but didn't attack again, keeping her distance and favoring the legs she hadn't bruised in the fall. Urabrask made a satisfied grunt, like coal rattling in a pan.

"Well. I suppose I'll have to consider living after all. I will let you fix me, kzunk of Atraxa." Ixhel was by his side immediately, cradling him up in her arms, ecstatic just to have worthy orders to follow. "I was content to simply die as the last praetor standing. But if the dross queen is going to stick around, I'll be happy to keep living just to spite her."

Ixhel got to her feet, carefully holding Urabrask to not damage him further, and was about to leap into flight when she heard a voice behind her.

"I'm coming."

Sheoldred looked up at Ixhel as she turned around, her face carefully not showing any emotion.  

"I already have one praetor," Ixhel said coolly. She still felt Sheoldred digging into her head, trying to necrotize her by sheer will.

"You need me."

"I need someone who'll help me fix this place, not tear it down out out of spite."

Sheoldred scoffed.

"You really are a kzunk, aren't you? Right now there are at least six different parties who will attempt to take control of the plane. The remainder of the Steel Thanes; Unctus, Ezuri and Malcator of the Chrome Host; and Glissa, the real Praetor of the Hunter's Maze. Never mind the Domini, or Ovika, or that skinny tree woman at the core."

Sheoldred scuttled right up to Ixhel's feet, still keeping her distance from the spear, and the thick tail that flicked around.

"This is the true nature of Phyrexia: cunning and competition. Without Elesh around to provide structure, it will be every Phyrexian for itself. You won't survive long enough to 'fix' this place unless you can stand your ground. And Urabrask is no tactician. I have the cunning and I know how to survive no matter what."

Ixhel stood for a moment, looking down at this bitter little headcrab that once decidedly outranked her. Sheoldred knew just how to infuriate her...but she also survived where her patrons did not. She may have a point.

"Let her come," Urabrask muttered. "Just don't trust her."

And so, laden with two broken praetors, she took off, flying to a safehouse that Urabrask hoped was still safe. And a ways away, three sets of eyes across three different entities watched with curiosity.

Reconstructive Salvage 3BR [U]

Sorcery

Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. If it's an artifact or Phyrexian, you may exile up to three artifact cards from your graveyard. When you do, put a +1/+1 counter on that creature for each card exiled this way.

Scrap by scrap, the surviving praetors were made whole once again.

Chapter Text

Ixhel flew. Not to hunt, not to flee, but to feel the wind against her as she rose and dove through the air. Before this catastrophe, it was rare that she wasn't carrying out Atraxa's orders, and rarer still to be this far from the Fair Basilica with no objective. She had time to think about how different the air felt, how updrafts from the forge-heat let her stay in the air longer. It weighed much lighter on her mind than everything else she had to worry about.

Urabrask led her to the Salvage Complex, one of the few outposts on the Furnace Layer that still had someone manning it. She flew over dozens of others in the meantime, abandoned by careless workers who left to join the Furnace Host. A goblin came out to meet them - not the fuselings that came out of the Quiet Furnace from time to time, but an old, wizened goblin from before the war, his broken body kept in a steel shell. He took the two praetors inside several hours ago, and Ixhel had nothing left to do but stretch her wings, make sure that the enemies that Sheoldred anticipated weren't about to attack

Finally, she spotted a moving flash of light outside the entrance. She leaned into a dive, shooting to the ground before pulling back right before impact, her wings flaring out to catch her. The goblin barely reacted to the display, merely turning his mallet in his hands.

"Done. He was heavily damaged. Won't walk for another day at most. But he's resilient, huh? Anyone lesser would have burned out by now."

The goblin stretched his neck a bit. Ixhel tried not to look to closely at his flesh. Besides the glow of the furnace and the subtle movements of oil under his skin, his core looked unmodified, like an uncompleat wrapped in metal armor. It didn't suit the rest of his sculpted form, like Geth's rotting head on top of his spider-like body.

"My respects to your talent, Slobad. And what of Sheoldred?"

The goblin merely shrugged.

"I offered to look at her. She told me where I could stick my hammer. A surprising amount of biological knowledge for a praetor, huh?"

Ixhel had no idea what he was talking about. She knew that the uncompleat had holes that they put things in for various purposes, but she never bothered to learn why and what should and shouldn't go where. Still, she nodded to move the conversation forward.

"I am not her minion, so she does not trust me. Fine. If Keskit still lives, he can fix her himself. Back to work for me. If the Great Work is going to continue, then it will need material."

The hulking goblin rolled his shoulders and started rumbling towards the glowing pit at the center of the Complex, surrounded by cranes and pulleys to draw up scrap after it'd been turned to molten metal.

"Slobad, honored Salvage Boss, one question before you go." The goblin didn't respond, but he did stop and turn towards the angel. "What does kzunk mean?"

"Rhyming slang. Popular in the Furnace Layer and the Dross Pits. The original term is half-treasure. Treasure has value to everyone, but half-treasure needs to be valued to matter, huh? A kzunk is an obligate minion with no ambition besides their owner's approval."

Ixhel's fingers curled around her spear, all twenty of them. Still the goblin perplexed her.

"But the praetors call me that like it's an insult. I am a good minion. I was the best minion. Should I be upset at being good at my role?"

The goblin merely stared at her, leaning on his hammer, before muttering 'no' and resuming his trudge back to his workstation.

One layer below, Glissa pulled her blade out of yet another bestial, copper-lined skull. The skull fell out of sight, following the corpse of its former owner. She climbed further up the copper tree, keeping an eye out for any more would-be usurpers.

The Hunters' Maze had been in a frenzy since Vorinclex died. The other praetors assumed that he had no greater role than raw muscle. After all, he rarely did anything but hunt and sleep. But the Hunters' Maze evolved to require an Apex Predator, someone for whom everything else in the forest was prey. Without him reminding the others where their place is, everything was trying to eat everything else to establish dominance. And with Zoprandel mysteriously missing, she attracted those who wanted to become the new Apex Predator. Some new creature tried to devour her every kilometer.

She sighed as she heard chittering coming from below: a lattice-lined mantis attempting to ambush her. She pulled out one of her collected blades, drenched it in venom from one of the tendrils that had replaced her hair, and dropped it point-down. A few seconds later, she heard an anguished hissing, followed by the scrabbling of insectoid legs trying to stay gripped to something. Then, nothing.

She had always planned to kill Vorinclex. Not out of any particular malice, mind you. They had a mutual respect for each other's lethality; Glissa would help with cunning plans that bored Vorinclex while he would resolve fights that Glissa had no interest in. None of the blind servitude of Atraxa to Elesh, but proper symbiosis. But she was a hunter long before Vorinclex pulled himself out of the mycosynth. She knew that raw strength was always secondary to well-trained instinct and a hunter's prowess. So, at some point, Vorinclex would die and she would take his place. It wasn't personal; it was just the nature of predators.

But she would have done it right. Made sure that the forest knew who its new queen was. This was just chaos, and costly chaos at that. Most of her armor and her new armblade had been torn-off by countless adversaries. What remained of the Copper Host was still armored with new metal for an invasion that had already failed, while she was so stripped bare that she almost looked uncompleat. Naked.

To her left she heard more movement: the lumbering sound of a troll on a nearby branch. Before she could draw another blade, a loud buzzing came from above, getting louder louder. The troll bellowed as the buzzing reached its peak. Then it went silent. Far below, there was a thunk as its corpse, covered in myriad bites, bounced off a branch below.

A swarm of pistus flies quickly surrounded her, though they didn't take a single bite out of her carapace, or even her exposed skin. They instead buzzed patiently as Glissa poured out a bit of oily nectar from a hip flask into her hands, which the flies eagerly consumed. Compleating and training the pistus flies as spies was one of her earliest successes after the initial takeover of Mirrodin. A handful of flies often went unnoticed on other layers, and a few thousand could easily dispose of spies from other layers.

Once the flies finished devouring their reward, one of them landed on her nose, just as it had been trained. Glissa carefully plucked it from its perch before squishing it between her fingers, letting the juice fall into her mouth. It was a little-known hunting tactic in Tel-Jilad when she was merely flesh, a quick if disgusting way to gain knowledge from a pistus fly. As she wiped the rest off her fingers, she saw visions of what it'd seen. In the midst of all the images of carnage, one stood out: a Basilica angel with a red, familiar body in her arms.

"He's alive," she murmured. "Well, I didn't expect this to be easy." She looked up at the rest of the swarm. "Continue monitoring and find me in 24 hours. When you do, I want a clear path from my location to Urabrask's. All glory to Phyrexia."

The swarm dispersed, flying back up to the Furnace Layer. Glissa leapt horizontally to another tree, letting the buzzing of the flies draw attention away from her. This would buy her an hour or two of peace, as long as she moved quietly. If she was especially careful, she might reach the incubation pods without any more trouble. While she wasn't able to dethrone Vorinclex as planned, she had a few contingencies planned. She wasn't certain about this particular contingency, but she did learn a few things from the compleated bonder before Elesh sent him to go die for her glory. If things went well, she'd have the maze back under her control within days if not hours, at which point she'd be able to take care of all those loose ends...

Pistus Swarming XXBG [U]

Sorcery

Create X 1/1 green and black Phyrexian Insect creature tokens with flying. If X is 3 or greater, destroy each other creature with flying.

A hundred bites will kill most uncompleat creatures. A thousand will kill most Phyrexians. The subsequent bites are just for fun.

Chapter Text

Sheoldred sulked, holing up in the eye cavity of some long-dead construct. The impudent goblin told her that she could either stay in the reconstruction chamber and be repaired, or leave. Rather than be stuck in whatever iron form Urabrask's pawn would give her, she took her leave to the edge of the complex, where she could sulk in peace.

That's why she was the first one to notice the approaching rumblings, the heavy footsteps vibrating through the mite's six legs,

"Ixhel!" She shouted towards the pit at the center of the station, skittering so fast towards it that she nearly slipped and flipped over. "Quit your brooding! Someone's found us."

Ixhel stirred from her thoughts. She'd let herself fall into a lull, watching Slobad methodically melt wreckage into slag over and over again. Any peace she could find was a small paradise, one that Sheoldred just popped with a pin. She hoped that Sheoldred was just trying to grab her attention; she seemed to savor any attention she could get in her state. Then she felt the vibrations as well, and she launched into flight.

"What's coming?" she shouted back down at Sheoldred.

"I can't see through the ground, kzunk, and neither can this mite. But it's from the Hunter's Maze. The other spheres would never make something this heavy and this slow."

Ixhel fought for altitude, trying to get high enough to see what was coming. Finally, she spotted five copper specks approaching the complex. She started circling them, trying to identify them without getting their attention. After a while, she swung back to the complex and landed, the force nearly throwing Sheoldred off her feet.

"Golems," she said. "Copper golems."

Slobad huffed, finally stepping away from his workstation to join the others. "More distractions, huh?" he muttered as he twirled his hammer in his hands.

"'Quiet you, I'm thinking," spat Sheoldred. "Copper golems, copper golems...might be Glissa. Or Ich-Tekik, if he's decided to make a claim instead of sucking up to whoever's in charge." Sheoldred glanced up at Ixhel. "You should cut them down before they reach the complex. You fight better when you're out in the open."

Ixhel paused to think, causing Sheoldred to hiss in frustration.

"They don't look outfitted for combat though," said the angel. "I've seen Ich-Tekik's work before; he can build bigger than this. Maybe this is a diplomatic envoy?" Ixhel spread her wings, preparing to take flight. "I'll go meet with them. We can't reject any new possible allies."

What is power?

Every praetor asked that question when they clawed their way out of the Mycosynth. It was what gave them purpose.

The one truth of Phyrexia was to be superior. By any means necessary, at any cost. But superiority must be defined, or else it's meaningless.

They were not, in fact, friendly golems. Luckily, they also had terrible aim, the lead one completely missing Ixhel with the chunk of iron it hurled at her.

The fighting began in earnest. Ixhel dove at the intruders again and again, her spear slicing at any crack in their armor, to little avail. The golems felt no pain, and beneath their copper shells was just more copper.

Slobad had better luck with his hammer. A solid strike to a golem's head was enough to stun it for a few seconds, allowing him to take another swing or two at the limbs. But he was only one against five, and the five moved forward inexorably. 

Urabrask believed in the self, in the fire that burns inside of individuals, and the honest creation that came from it. Not the suffocating nature of the crowd. Even the presence of other Phyrexians could feel stifling. So Urabrask hid. Away from the rest of the Phyrexia. Away from 'unity'. The Phyrexians of Oxidda, and then of the Quiet Furnace, were left to their own devices, so long as they didn't cause trouble. So were the Mirrans, for that matter. Let the fires of the Great Work speak for themselves. Let each pursue their own art.

So much for that. The Furnace Layer laid near-empty, the workers that drove the flames now lost somewhere in the multiverse, leaderless now as they always were. The Mirrans that Urabrask let roam, the ones that had their own fires, they were also gone. They were never committed to the Great Work in the first place, just to their own survival.

Did no one care as Urabrask did? Did no one else understand the raw beauty of craft, of art?

Ixhel stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Slobad, using her wings to block attacks targeted at his fragile, uncompleat head.

The golems had pushed them into the Salvage Complex. Their target was clear now: the set of levers, machinery and wires that allowed the Salvage Complex to process salvage. Sheoldred, skittering safely behind the two fighters, suggested letting them get close enough to the pit at the center and then push them off; Slobad was insistent that they not get anywhere near his workstation. Ixhel just tried to keep them both alive as they argued.

As Ixhel leapt back, she slid on a bit of loose plating. She launched herself into the air before she lost her footing, leaving Slobad defenseless for a moment. One unblocked strike knocked the hammer from his hands, a single step crushing it into scrap. The golems moved forward. All they could do was move back.

Urabrask was, perhaps, always an artist at heart. How else does one express what is true to oneself and only oneself? That was something the other praetors would never understand. Elesh and Sheoldred thought art only served to glorify others. Jin explained art away as mathematical proportions and psychological phenomenon, something that his intellect was too superior to consider. Vorinclex would occasionally appreciate a particularly nice splatter of blood. But none of them could really create. None of them knew how to speak to the other's soul. Their interactions were always power plays in one form or another.

Maybe that's why Urabrask truly chose to hide. Because self-expression meant reinventing and experimenting and changing. The others saw change as a sign of weakness, a lack of commitment to ideals. Elesh made the others change when they submitted to her as a sign of fealty. So Urabrask stayed the same to meet expectations; new forms and new expressions were pushed down; the form they were stuck with was hidden because it wasn't good enough. Not for Urabrask.

After all, it was the form of a war machine. Like Vorinclex or Jin-Gitaxias. Hulking and clawed and brutal, raw function. The mycosynth made him to lead armies - and rend them in twain just as easily - even if he never particularly wanted to. Something more careful would be better, something with hands to grip tools, something dexterous enough to move however he wanted, to show anything inside himself that he wanted to show. Something closer to Elesh or Sheoldred.

He'd pushed such thoughts down so many times before. But this is a new era. Urabrask stood as the last of the praetors, despite it all, despite being ready to die and let Phyrexia create something else in his place.

But if this was a time of rebirth, perhaps even she could be reborn.

She would continue the Great Work, and she would do it her way. No more hiding. Phyrexia would find perfection in the beauty of change.

The others just saw a red and gold blur leap over them.

It slammed into the lead golem. Two barbed spikes attached to its arm shot forward like pistons before retracting, piercing through the copper plating. The rest was torn off, and what was underneath was ripped to shreds. When another swung a heavy arm to crush it, it slashed forward, and the limb fell to the ground. The rest of the intruders were summarily smashed, clawed, spiked and kicked until they were nothing more than scrap.

As Urabrask stood in the middle of the carnage, Ixhel and Sheoldred gazed at her new form. It was still recognizable: the smooth reptilian head, the vents sticking out of the neck, the long spindly tail. But it was covered in elegant gold filigree and fluted detailing. Her claws were replaced with myr-like hands, the spiky, claw-like pile bunkers attached to the forearms making up for the lack of sharpness. Ixhel stood transfixed. Something in her mind told her that she should be kneeling, even though Atraxa and Elesh were nowhere in sight.

"Slobad, take this salvage to be melted down," said Urabrask, her new voice more like a low trumpet call rather than rumbling coal, picking a bit of copper off her claw. "Ixhel, come with me. It's about time we discuss how this plane should be 'fixed'."

Urabrask, the Unveiled 4RR [M]

Legendary Creature - Phyexian Praetor

First strike

At the beginning of combat on your turn, activate a mana ability of each untapped land you control. If you would lose unspent mana this turn, as long as you attacked this turn, that mana becomes red instead.

At the beginning of combat on your opponent's turn, they activate a mana ability of each untapped land they control. Losing unspent mana this turn causes that player to lose that much life

4/5

Chapter Text

This was a very odd situation for Ixhel. Atraxa was the Praetors' Voice. Elesh was the speaker of the Machine Orthodoxy. Phyrexians like Ixhel weren't built for speaking or giving orders. They were tools. When they spoke, it was with their master's voice. Ixhel wasn't supposed to have silly things like 'opinions'.

And now she had two entire praetors waiting for her to advise on what they should do. Renegade, volatile praetors but praetors nonetheless. 

It would be fine. She just needed to focus. If this is what Phyrexia needs her to be, she'll become it. 

She flew from her perch back to the ground, where Urabrask had prepared a small set-up for her: a few hunks of cubic slag as chairs, and a sheet of iron as a backdrop.

"Cleared your head, Ix? Ready?" said Urabrask, her legs crossed and her back straight as she sat on her makeshift slag throne. Ixhel nodded, trying not to look directly at her. Every time she looked at the new Urabrask, her mind went blank for a few seconds. She needed to focus. This was important. She glanced at Slobad, who glanced back before returning to the repairs on his hammer, and at Sheoldred, who was clearly restraining the urge to pester her for taking so long. 

She took a moment, felt the glistening oil pulse inside her, and began.

"I've been flying through all of New Phyrexia since the tragedy at the seedcore. With no leadership, the rank-and-file Phyrexians are either paralyzed without orders or fighting to see who becomes the new leader. Eventually, someone would arise as the new exemplar of Phyrexian virtues, and we would once again be led forward to perfection."

She quickly drew a rough diagram of New Phyrexia on a sheet of scrap metal, carving out nine concentric circles with her spear. Then she marked three spots with a sigil: the slashed circle that Phyrexia used to mark things of importance.

"But we don't have time. The structure of the plane has been warped and the Domini are exacerbating it. It's possible that the entire plane will collapse in on itself within two weeks."

She checked the crowd. Everyone was paying attention - even Slobad had stopped tinkering. So far so good.

"The first point of concern is here." She tapped her spear against the sigil on the outer circle on the diagram. "The Monumental Facade is being torn apart. Sophim and Zopraedel have left the Furnace and the Maze, respectively, and now they're up there engaging in random destruction. Zopraedel knocks down the monuments and Sophim slices the remains into pieces."

"Building something," Slobad said confidently, his goggles gleaming. "It's the same thing we do, cutting up larger wrecks before melting them down. The Facade is built out of glimmervoid, huh? They're making something out of it."

"Possibly. But the main concern is the damage they're causing to Mirrex. Plates of glimmervoid keep falling onto the surface of Mirrex. There's nothing of importance on Mirrex to get damaged, but if Mirrex takes too much damage, it's going to start coming apart and falling on the lower levels."

All three members of the audience glanced at the ceiling of the Furnace Layer - the underside of Mirrex. Plates of iron lined the underbelly of Mirrex, but if one looked closely, they could see the iron straining here and there.

"The next point of concern is in the Surgical Bays. We shouldn't need to worry about anything in the interceding layers for now. The Furnace is near abandoned, and the Maze is occupied with infighting."

"Do not forget the golems we just fought," hissed Sheoldred, interrupting her train of thought. "They did not simply wander out of the Maze. Someone there is acting against us." 

Ixhel's jaw clenched as she tried to get back on track.

"I have not forgotten. But an assassin can be avoided. A collapse cannot. May I continue?"

Sheoldred huffed but kept silent. Urabrask nodded approvingly and Ixhel once again looked away before that little bit of praise took her off-track again. Instead she tapped her spear against the second sigil on the diagram.

"Tekuthal's squatting on top of the undersea Fathom Ward, Jin-Gitaxias's blinkmoth serum reserve, and he's clearly doing...something. Drivnod keeps clawing his way into and out of the Surgical Bays to meet with him. When they 'talk', Tekuthal raises a few tentacles above the sea and makes caricatures of certain Phyrexians. Drivnod then comes back with their corpses stuck to his staff and gives them to him. Whatever they're doing, it involves culling swathes of Phyrexians that we can't spare, and Drivnod is too large to travel between the spheres safely. Every time he squeezes through one of the shafts between the spheres, he rips up part of the Surgical Bays. Cracks are forming near the shafts and drops of quicksilver keep-"

"Dripping into the dross!" spat Sheoldred. "Argh, I knew it! When I escaped the Fair Basilica, I could tell that the dross smelled off. I should have realized it myself. I've spent too much time working with Jin to not recognize the smell of quicksliver." The mite's chelicerae chittered angrily as her eight eyes rounded on Ixhel. "Kzunk, how bad are these cracks? Now!"

Ixhel froze. This wasn't one of Sheoldred's usual petulant bouts of rage. Even Urabrask looked at her with concern. 

"Um...well...they're leaking maybe one incubation pod's worth of quicksilver every hour?" She stumbled over her words, unsure of where this was going. "It's only dripping at the cracks, not flowing, but Drivnod's been making a lot of trips between the spheres, so there's, um, a lot of cracks."

Sheoldred was silent for a moment. When she did speak, her voice was small.

"If I may take the floor, Ixhel?"

"...Yes?" Ixhel found Sheoldred's politeness more worrying than her distress. Sheoldred hopped off her seat and crawled on top of Ixhel's head, this time being careful to not cause any harm.

"Now, listen closely. I don't want to repeat myself and I don't want to get drowned out because you think I'm being 'rude' again. Gitaxias had several plans to betray the Machine Orthodoxy once it was no longer convenient. He ran them by me whenever we...collaborated." She glared at Ixhel from on top of her head, daring her to accuse her of treason against her precious Orthodoxy. "One of his more bold plans was to flood the Fair Basilica with gallons of a modified quicksilver solution that he had originally developed for laboratory use. Of course I threatened to tear his throat out if any of that got into my Dross Pits, so he assured me that the solution was sealed in undersea tanks across the Surgical Bays, between the bottom of the sea and Kraynox's oil reservoir."

Sheoldred paused. Urabrask and Slobad looked at her expectantly, and Ixhel stifled the sudden wave of jealousy. This was important. It didn't matter that Urabrask was looking at that annoying mite-head praetor, no matter how devastating it felt. 

"...And those tanks are near the shafts, huh?" Slobad asked.

"When I asked where the tanks were, he said 'I couldn't be trusted' and 'it's too caustic to be used frivolously' and 'give me back my pants you scurrilous pest'." Sheoldred did her best to evoke air quotes with mite legs. "But if I was planning to flood a lower layer with liquid, I'd keep that liquid close to the shafts. We need to make sure none of these tanks crack open and contaminate my sphere...or the ones beneath it."

"And how caustic is this solution?" said Urabrask, her claws digging into the iron she was sitting on.

"It makes things very, very sterile for a very, very long time. It melts flesh and oil, and any item submerged in it for too long will do the same. The Dross Pits and the Fair Basilica would be untouchable for years if not decades. Never mind what damage it could to the Mycosynth or the Seedcore."

"Um, about the Mycosynth," Ixhel said in a small voice. The two furnace dwellers looked at her and she immediately regretted trying to interrupt a praetor.

"Yes, yes, I'm done. Go ahead, kzunk." Sheoldred hopped off her head and skittered back to her seat. "What horror is happening in the Mycosynth Gardens?"

"Mondrak keeps singing the same hymn, over and over again. It has some effect on the minds of weaker Phyrexians", she said, pointing at the sigil near the center of the diagram. "What remains of the Machine Orthodoxy is under its sway. She's pulled them all down into the gardens and..." 

Ixhel fought off the wave of disgust, the same she felt when she first saw what Mondrak was doing.

"She's eating it. The mycosynth. As one mouth consumes it, the others command her followers to harvest more."

Her three listeners sat stunned. Every Phyrexian knew that the mycosynth was the birthplace of the new empire, where the praetors were born to make their mark on the hollow world. An unparalleled font of creation. It's why Elesh guarded it from the other praetors by building her sphere on top of it, so no one could produce a champion that could match her. It was the one thing on New Phyrexia that could not be repurposed for another role. It was already perfect - perfect and impossible to recreate.

Sheoldred recovered first, bursting out laughing.

"I really did think you were overreacting, kzunk. Your kind always fret whenever someone's not holding your leash." Sheoldred composed herself, wiping the smile from her face. "But no, this is very serious. We should go down to the Surgical Bays immediately, maybe ally with one of Jin's surviving subordinates to-"

"No." Urabrask stood, a wave of heat coming from her torso. "We go up."

"Up? So what if some of your forge gets smushed a little? The Mycosynth Gardens are at stake here. We need those. I need those. I need to regrow my body so I'm not stuck as a head for the rest of time!"

"It takes longer to climb to a higher sphere than to fall to a lower one. If we deal with the two issues on the lower spheres first and something happens on the Facade, we won't get to it in time."

Sheoldred and Urabrask glared at each other.

"Might be worth it to take some time to plan, huh?" interjected Slobad, who had returned to his hammer repairs. "Otherwise we rush in like furnace scamps and make mistakes. You two talk in inside, I close up the Salvage Complex so no one breaks my tools."

The two looked at the goblin before nodding. Sheoldred turned to Ixhel.

"You've done your work. We will decide the next course of action. And once we do, we need to talk. I need to know who's in charge where in the lower spheres. We might be able to get allies, but only if we can convince them that helping is in their best interests rather than whatever fool scheme they're planning. You're dismissed."

Sheoldred skittered off, back towards the reconstruction chamber. Urabrask sighed and turned to Ixhel herself. 

"You did well, Ixy," she said, patting her affectionately on the head. "I'm not sure whether I can actually 'fix' this - one Dominus is already a threat, let alone five - but I'll take an honest shot. If it all goes helter-skelter, at least we'll look impressive as we die."

Ixhel squeaked out a 'thank you' as Urabrask followed Sheoldred. As soon as the praetors were inside and out of sight, she fell to her knees. She knew this feeling. She remembered how it arose when Atraxa would put her hand on her, when she knew she was Atraxa's best servant. What was it doing here now? Why was it consuming her mind when much greater things were at stake.

She heard a sharp tap, metal against metal, and realized that Slobad was still there. She drew her wings over herself, trying to hide the embarrassment on her face. Slobad didn't notice as he got up, his hammer sufficiently repaired. Or he was being polite. Or he didn't care. His face betrayed nothing about his thoughts. She waited, hoping that he'd ignore her moment of weakness and move on, but instead he stopped by her, leaning on his hammer.

"Knew someone before I was made metal. Raksha, son of Beylyss, leader of the leonin. He was...no, he was not a friend. But he trusted me, huh? He was handsome. Talented. Many girls wanted to be his consort. Always nearby, eager to show that they'd fight well in his name, outscheme his enemies, serve with utter loyalty, bear strong cubs, keep his bed nice and warm. Almost walked in on him 'testing' a few of them for the latter, huh? Never spoke of it again with him."

Ixhel looked up at him. He was still speaking in riddles, but she'd learned how taciturn Slobad could be. He wouldn't be telling her this if he didn't think it was useful.

"He did not pick any of girls he was with that night. He picked Rishan, daughter of the seer Ushanti. Rishan was not the prettiest, or the strongest. Not even the most obedient; she argued with him more than anybody. But he chose her because she talked to him. Spoke her mind, even though she was beneath him. Still followed orders, still respected authority. But Raksha loved that she did so on her terms." Slobad sighed, pulling at his goggles. To Ixhel's surprise, there were still eyes of flesh under them. Tired, weary eyes.

"My times with him were sad times, but most of my times were. Only three people ever trusted me who weren't fellow goblin outcasts. He was one of them. And Urabrask reminds me of him, huh? Something to think about." He grinned, an expression that seemed alien on his face. "I wish you luck."

"I think we've learned some useful information, Ich-Tekik."

"All I learned is that you're willing to throw perfectly good golems to get wrecked. The holistic nature of binding the will of Phyrexia and the strength of the hunt into a mindless being is not something that can be done carelessly. That was three weeks of work, Glissa."

"We know that the praetor is the only one who can match them. The angel can't pierce their armor. And Sheoldred is a useless parasite as always."

"And the goblin?"

"...I don't want to think about the goblin. He's of no concern here."

"Fine. So what now?"

"Take prototypes #1 and #3 and take control of this sector of the Maze for me. I still have allies here; I'll make sure you have support."

"And prototype #2?"

"I'm going to take it up to the Furnace, of course. I can't take over the plane with a refurbished relic and a jumped-up bug in my way."

"As long as I can get back to my work when this is all over. I have a really interesting design based on the Wurmcoils we used during the initial takeover. With the right framework, they'd be able to split into smaller wurms every-"

"Don't. Vorinclex wouldn't let you blather and I won't either."

"As you wish."

"Say it right."

"...As you wish, Praetor Glissa."

Ich-Tekik's Sanctum - [U]

Land

Ich-Tekik's Sanctum enters the battlefield tapped.

T: Add {G}

5GG, T, Sacrifice Ich-Tekik's Sanctum: Create a 3/3 colorless Phyrexian Golem artifact creature token. For each Golem or Artificer you control, put a +1/+1 counter on target Golem.

Chapter Text

Ixhel sat at the edge of the pit in the middle of the Salvage Complex, exhausted. As Urabrask and Sheoldred planned their next moves, she helped Slobad proof the Salvage Complex against any scavengers that might ravage it. Most of her work was reaching high places that Slobad couldn't reach, fastening metal plating around heavy machinery. But some of it involved helping Slobad push all the scrap lying around into the pit; molten metal was harder to steal than cold metal. She was built to be a warrior, not a laborer; her muscles groaned at her.

"You can stay and rest," said Slobad as he pushed the last bit of scrap - the broken head of a batterskull - into the pit. "The rest is more technical. Suited for my hands, not yours."

Ixhel murmured a thank-you. Her eyes watched as the bit of metal skull melted into the molten slag. For the first time since she flew from that other angel, she felt confident about the future of New Phyrexia. With two praetors on the job, surely things would be fixed. Now if only she could deal with all the other uncertainties roiling in her mind.

She felt a familiar warmth against her back, then to her left. She turned to see Urabrask sitting down next to her, claws locking into the ground to ensure that she didn't fall into the pit. Ixhel immediately turned away, focusing on the slag, trying to keep her thoughts under control. 

"Ixy. We've settled on a course of action, and will be moving out in an hour; Sheoldred's looking for something nearby before we leave." The praetor looks over Ixhel, who had curled her tail around her body like a shield against Urabrask's attention. "Are you doing okay?"

"I'm ready to serve, Praetor," she said chirpily, pushing down her exhaustion. Urabrask paused, bemused, before asking again.

"No, Ixhel, how do you feel? Are you upset? Worried? Tired?"

...You would accuse me of weakness, Praetor?" Despite herself, she pushed her chest up and splayed her wings confidently. Urabrask half-growled, half-sighed, and Ixhel's bravado crumpled like paper.

"Having emotions is not a weakness, whatever Elesh or Atraxa told you. We are all bound to the will of Phyrexia, but we cannot help but have our own thoughts and feelings." Urabrask turns to Ixhel, carefully placing a comforting hand on Ixhel's shoulder. Even near the warmth of Urabrask, Ixhel felt a shiver run through her. "Phyrexia has needs, but so do you, and emotions are how you know what you need. Understand?"

Ixhel meekly nodded. It was not the same as Atraxa's fingers brushing against her cheek as she was given orders, but it was the closest she'd felt to that since the disaster. Her mind threw up images of Urabrask touching her elsewhere, herself touching Urabrask. Fanciful thoughts. That's not how a master treats a servant in Phyrexia, and vice versa.

"I'm...uncertain, Praetor. I'm glad that you've taken the lead on fixing Phyrexia, but I'm still not sure why the Domini are destroying it in the first place. They're different from us, but they're still Phyrexians; Phyrexia shouldn't act against itself."

"Is that's all that's bothering you?"

What if she just touched her face to hers right now? Would she execute her for her impudence? Or something else, something with more touching? She'd heard of such an action before, but it didn't have a Phyrexian equivalent. 'Voice-embrace' was as close as it got. Was it...'kiss' in the tongue of the uncompleat?

"Yes, Praetor," she lied.

Urabrask cocked her head, but didn't press the issue. Instead, she turned away.

"I have something I want to discuss with you, Ixhel. Something private, at least for now. It involves...treason against your former mistresses. Will you hear me out?"

Ixhel nodded, reluctantly. She was not blind to the fact that she was working with her former enemies, as uncomfortable as it was whenever she was reminded.

"Jin didn't just come to me for blightsteel, though many of our meetings came back around to whether I could provide it. Sheoldred had a scheme to usurp Elesh. She'd learned of a form of power dynamics that's filtered through an emotion - called 'lust' - present in the uncompleat but not us, not naturally. She would harness that emotion to establish a secondary hierarchy where Elesh would serve her rather than the other way around. She needed Jin to handle the technical aspects of the plan, and Jin needed my expertise to calibrate his tools. Emotions and desire are not his specialty."

"...I will not fault you for your crime, if only because there are no courts left to judge. I'm surprised that you were able to work with Gitaxias though. He's so talkative and braggadocious and you...weren't."

Urabrask thought back to her last meeting with Jin-Gitaxias.

Urabrask looked over reports from elsewhere in the Great Furnace. Output rates, production complications, Solphim sightings. He rarely requested reports and loathed reading them, but it was necessary to ensure that nothing disrupted the Great Work.

Beneath his heel, Jin-Gitaxias kneeled, his head forced against the ground by Urabrask's foot. Metal cuffs held his claws together behind his back, and a giant clamp, the more vital binding, kept his jaw closed. The Core Augur hissed a complaint through his teeth.

"You still have ten more minutes. More or less. Be patient." Urabrask knew it was twelve minutes, but he knew impreciseness bothered Jin-Gitaxias, almost as much as being unable to share his genius for a full hour. What had started out as an experiment with Jin's new tech had led to an enticing ritual before their meetings. Enticing for Urabrask, at least. 

Perhaps he would let Jin out of the clamp early. It'd give him extra time for the foot-cleaning before they got to the actual reason for the meeting.

"I found some common ground with him on which we could work out our differences," Urabrask quickly rattled off. "Never mind how. The point is that their scheme backfired. The power dynamics they were toying with are tied to uncompleat reproductive rituals, and those are rarely 100% strict. The hierarchy ended up more complicated than they'd envisioned, and Elesh became servant and mistress in her own right, subjugating and being subjugated in turn. I understand that it was somewhat traumatic for all three of them."

"Wait, so..." Ixhel frowned in disbelief. "They actually went forward with that? What did they do to-"

"They did, and I advise you to not think too hard about it. I mean it. I don't know what rules Atraxa put in your head; trying to conceive of Elesh debasing herself in any manner may actually break your mind."

Some part of her mind wanted to ask a thousand questions. What kinds of debasement? How did she turn the tables on Jin and Sheoldred? But she saw steam coming off of Urabrask's neck as she fiddled with her new, more nimble talons, so she kept quiet.

"My point here is that Jin was in possession of technology that could induce lust and the physical changes needed to slake it. Normally the process involves electrodes, but the last time we talked, Jin was figuring out how to do it without any attachments, using a magical focus to subconsciously put thoughts into the heads of his fellow Phyrexians. Upon Elesh's victory, he'd simply immobilize the Alabaster Host with lust and stage a coup. Obviously he's not alive right now to use such a device, but it wouldn't surprise me if he set such a device to activate if he died, out of spite."

"And...why do you think such a device is active?"

"Aside from some...personal changes that I don't want to go into? You've clearly been lusting over me since I was rebuilt."

Ixhel flinched like she'd been slapped in the face.

"Oh. So..that's what...that was," Ixhel murmured weakly. All her attempts to keep her composure were for naught. This was a new emotion of failure. Not the sharp sting of disappointing one of his mistresses, but something more exposing, as if someone tore open her flesh to bare her own heart to the world. She felt stinging warmth in her face, her oily blood broiling beneath her skin and kept her head down, looking at the body that had betrayed her. She thought back to the emotion that flooded her when Atraxa touched her cheek, what seemed so long ago. Was that also lust? How long has she been subject to some nonsense of the uncompleat?

"What did I say when I sat down, Ixhel?" Urabrask's voice cut through Ixhel's meltdown, one claw clutching her hand. "Emotions are not a matter of shame. It's how you act on them. Calm down."

Ixhel clung to Urabrask's claw as she tried to calm down, her entire body shaking as she tried to focus on Urabrask's words. Slowly, the feeling of humiliation faded, until Ixhel was able to look Urabrask head-on.

"Why only me?" Ixhel said, her voice still trembling. "Why not Sheoldred or Slobad? I want to be a good servant, not some...flesh-headed pervert!"

"Lust works differently for everyone. Some have particular tastes that they're attracted to. Some need a particular scenario. You've been craving orders and authority, so I was...more appealing to you than most." Urabrask kept her claw in Ixhel's hand. "I didn't bring this up to shame you. I just want you to know what's happening to you and why. Once we take care of the Monumental Facade, we can search the Surgical Bays and track down whatever's causing this. Does that sound alright?"

"Yes, I would...like that very much thank you." Ixhel manages to smile. Everything was fine. There was just a device somewhere designed and hidden by one of the smartest Phyrexians on the plane that's subconsciously pumping images into her head that make her want to kiss. These things happen.

Then she realized that she was still holding Urabrask's claw and tried to pull away, only to accidentally pull her claw into her lap. She felt another shiver at that intimate personal touch...but she realized she wasn't the only one who'd shuddered; Urabrask trembled just as much.

Suddenly, questions that she had silenced while a praetor was speaking to her started trickling up. How did Urabrask notice those 'physical changes'? Why did Urabrask avoid details whenever the topic of what exactly happened as part of this lust-bombing? Why had Urabrask been so reticent through the entire conversation? Why did she look as uncomfortable as Ixhel felt?

And then it was obvious:

Urabrask was lusting over her as well. She was just better at hiding it.

The thought that even one of the fantasies running through her mind might be reciprocated set bombs off inside her head. Praetors are the best that Phyrexia has to offer, and should be catered to. If a praetor is dealing with a problem, then their underlings should try to fix it. If the problem is lust then...maybe being some sort of flesh-headed pervert might help her be a better servant? Maybe she'd like that.

She quickly glanced towards Slobad. He was occupied with a rusty hatch joint; no one would see them. Urabrask had already pulled her claw back, muttering an apology, but Ixhel's matched her, placing her hand on Urabrask's flank, tracing the new gilded detailing down the side. Ixhel felt Urabrask's heat aura get hotter, the lizard-like praetor's jaw locking closed. She'd never seen a praetor flustered before.

"Praetor..." Ixhel starts, "excuse my forwardness, but are you also having...emotions?"

They stared at each other, motionless, frozen at the threshold of the door Ixhel had just opened. It was a welcome reprieve when an explosion rocked the far side of the complex, providing a convenient change in topic.

As they both raced to the smoking crater, Ixhel flying and Urabrask running, they saw Slobad stomping towards it, a greasy rag in his hand, his brow furrowed.

"Can't I go one day without having to fix this place, huh?" he grunted.

"Slobad," started Urabrask, the first to the crater. "What caused the explosion?"

"Not an explosion," replied Slobad as he reached the crater himself. "Someone tossed this."

He waved the smoke away until the cause of the crater was visible: a copper sphere, twice the size of Urabrask, completely unmarked and unscarred despite punching a hole through the floor.

"Copper?" Urabrask murmured. She dropped low, ready to pounce. "Ixhel, stay high and look for whoever launched this. Whoever sent the golems no doubt sent this too."

"Of course," said Ixhel. Once again, they were praetor and servant. Orders given, orders obeyed.

Before Ixhel could gain any meaningful height, an arm burst out of the shell, all claw and gristle and serration. Then another. Slobad stepped back, then Urabrask, the shape emerging from the crater being far too familiar.

"What? Impossible!" cried Ixhel.

"You were supposed to be dead," growled Urabrask, pistons ready to strike.

Vorinclex did not respond to questions or accusations. He simply rose out of the crater, pulled an arm back, and struck.

First Embers 1RW [U]

Instant

Up to two target creatures gain lifelink until end of turn. Whenever you gain life this turn, you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.

The praetor and the scion both recognized themselves in the other's hesitancy.

Chapter Text

Vorinclex's first strike caught Slobad square in the chest, batting his metal shell across the Salvage Complex like skipping a stone. The next one narrowly missed Urabrask. The filigreed praetor dashed forward, ducking and weaving through Vorinclex's blows as she clawed and punched with her piston claws. The monstrous praetor barely flinched at the gouges and dents torn into his copper-lined skull-like faceplate, swiping at Urabrask with blinding speed.

All the while, Ixhel flitted in the air nervously. She was told to go see what launched Vorinclex into the station; her praetor told her to go do that. But that same praetor was now facing the greatest predator on New Phyrexia - one who supported Ixhel's creation, one who outranked her. Did her old loyalties apply here? Was following orders worth letting her mistress get hurt? She already lost one mistress already, left dead in some uncompleat backwater of the multiverse.

For a moment, it looked like she wouldn't have to worry about that. Urabrask hopped back and flipped onto Vorinclex's head, punching her pile-bunkers into Vorinclex's eyeholes. Vorinclex roared as he tried to pry Urabrask off his head, but the nimble praetor pivoted away from his claws, each twist pushing the pistons deeper into his head. 

And then Vorinclex paused, turned towards the machinery that powered the Complex's crane, and leapt into it, crushing Urabask into the sheet metal with his bulk. 

"Praetor Urabrask!" Ixhel swooped in, ready to test her spear against the apex of the Grand Evolution. Her descent grew steeper and steeper, faster and faster, any thought to her own safety blinded by her fealty. She slammed into Vorinclex so hard that his faceplate cracked. With a howl, Vorinclex broke away, clutching his head.

"Urabrask? Miss?" Ixhel asked, afraid that there'd be no answer. But her mistress growled, a puff of smoke emerging from a twisted back vent. Ixhel sighed with relief; she was still alive; she still had a mistress. 

"I'll get you out," the angel said as she slid her spear between Urabrask and the steel plate. "We need to leave before Vorinclex tears us apart."

"That's not Vorinclex," muttered Urabrask as Ixhel helped pry her out of the plating, her impression left in the metal like something out of a cartoon. 

"What?"

"Look at the way he's moving. Think about how he stopped to think before he crushed me." Urabrask pulled herself the rest of the way out, her talons shaky as they touched the ground again. "I think it's another golem. A more advanced one. It's trying to act like Vorinclex, but Vorinclex always fought with raw instinct, not tactics."

"Someone is...trying to impersonate a praetor?" Something foul bubbled up in Ixhel's chest. There was an order to things. On the bottom of that order were newts, then constructs and technicians and other simple minions, then elite minions like herself, and then praetors at the top. It was not immutable - sometimes a praetor proved unworthy of their station, sometimes a mere minion showed unusual promise - but the order exists. To impersonate a praetor...to just claim that authority without true merit...the mere chance that she might have sided with a fake against her new mistress, her wonderful new mistress...

"I'll execute it," she said coldly.

"You can't," Urabrask growled, carefully watching 'Vorinclex' as it groped around blindly. "Your spear was having trouble with the golems, and this duplicate is stronger."

"I just struck it down!"

"And look what it cost you!"

Urabrask grabbed one of her arms and raised it, a sharp pain piercing through Ixhel's fury. The limb was twisted, oil bubbling out where the red tendons had frayed. As she looked at the broken limb, she felt the rest of her body aching from the force of that impact, pain that she'd pushed down because of Urabrask.

With a scowl, she pushed that pain back down again. She had work to do. Nobody pits her against her own mistress.

"I still have three good arms. I'll execute whoever sent it!"

Ixhel launched into the air, every working limb propelling her from the ground. Before Urabrask could call her back, she heard a nearby grunt. 'Vorinclex' was looking at her, the cracks in its faceplate slowly mending before her eyes as it began to charge. Urabrask raised her fists and got ready for another round.

Glissa peered through the scope from her makeshift blind - a broken furnace strider, its hollow husk serving as an excellent hiding place. She smiled as her copper puppet tore a gash across Urabrask's head.

She had suggested the idea ages ago. Vorinclex resisted attempts to actively research and develop new tactics - true insight came from lived experience and battle-scars - but she managed to convince him. The greatest hunters among animals hunted in packs together, so he should as well. And since Vorinclex was the only one of his kind, he'd have to create more of himself to hunt with him. Under that reasoning, she convinced him to commission three constructs from Ich-Tekik in his own image, while she negotiated with the sculptor behind his back to ensure that their first loyalty would be to her. 

Their original purpose was to help her assassinate Vorinclex when the time came, but the current catastrophe opened up new possibilities. The Maze needed an apex predator, and the Maze knew that Vorinclex was the ultimate predator. Two Vorinclexes running around would quickly reestablish the pecking order, an order that she'd be able to control. That they were still capable of taking out praetors was a happy little bonus.

She assessed the situation. Urabrask wouldn't be able to hold up much longer. The goblin had been thrown clear out of the conflict where he wouldn't get hurt wouldn't interfere. The angel caused a temporary setback, but she crippled herself in the process and fled. The only loose end was the last of the four, the parasite. Even decapitated, it was never safe to let Sheoldred get away.

Glissa scanned the area for any sign of the head-on-a-mite, zooming in to try and spot the tiny target. Then, something jostled the strider from the outside. Glissa froze, trying to keep her presence hidden, trying to hear who the new assailant was. All she could her was the sound of air moving and a faint breeze. Wings?

Glissa stumbled as her hiding spot started shaking, and quickly dove out of the furnace strider. As she hit the ground, she saw the shadow of a winged figure looming atop the toppled strider. 

"Glissa," Ixhel spat. "Whatever game you're playing, it's over."

Glissa danced backwards as Ixhel pounced, wildly swinging her spear with her three good arms. The elf had deemed the angel as a minimal threat, but that was against the golem. Against Glissa herself, that spear kept her too far away to lunge in with a poisoned blade. This wasn't one of the rank-and-file angels of the Basilica; she fought too well, and her wings were too large. Who was this angel and where did this vitriol against her come from?

"How could you do this?" Ixhel yelled as she continued her assault. "Vorinclex was your praetor! To steal your master's identity for your own gain is to betray him!"

Glissa sneered. She didn't recognize the angel but she recognized the sanctimonious praetor-worship of Elesh's elite. 

"I'm nobody's subordinate. I push my own life forward. If that means trampling over leaders who couldn't make the cut, so be it. Don't act like you're better than this, Basilica trash. I'm not the one cozying up to two of Elesh's greatest adversaries."

"Watch your tongue! I do this for the good of Phyrexia. Someone has to keep the world from falling apart!"

Ixhel leapt into the air and plunged down with her spear, only for Glissa to leap onto the spear itself. Before Ixhel could push her away, she jabbed a knife into her hand, the same one twisted half-off by Vorinclex. The wound bubbled and seethed as soon as the cut was made, and Ixhel could already feel death creeping up her arm into her torso. She looked at Glissa, the elf comfortably keeping her distance as she waited for Ixhel to die, a small, smug little smile on her face. 

Push the pain down. There's work to be done. Push the pain down. There's work to be done.

She tore the arm from the tattered tendons it hung from, choking back a cry of pain as she tossed it Glissa. The elf, eyes wide with shock, dodged out of the way as the limb sailed past her, landing on the ground half-dissolved. The elf readied two more knives as Ixhel held her ground, oily blood dripping from her new stump.

"Why don't you worry about keeping yourself from falling apart," she growled as she dove forward.

With a slight change, Urabrask's previous strategy had borne fruit. She'd leaped onto 'Vorinclex' and dug in right behind the construct's faceplate, her pistons plunged deep into its neck. For all its strength and speed, the construct was not flexible. All it could do was try to buck her off or bash her against the Complex's equipment. But the construct was untiring and unyielding, while Urabrask was being pushed to her limit. 

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something. Beneath the ground, something was burrowing towards the Complex, sending iron chips flying as it did. Urabrask had an inkling as to what it was, and a plan quickly formed in her mind.

Urabrask counted to three and leapt from the golem, dashing towards the broken earth. 'Vorinclex' was immediately on her tail. Urabrask was fast, but she was also exhausted; she could hear it growl behind her as it tried to close the distance. Then, a few meters before she ran into the underground disturbance, she dug one of her pistons into the earth and pivoted on it, swerving into a ninety-degree left turn. 'Vorinclex' slid past her as it tried to turn to pursue her, right into where the earth had cracked.

The reaction was immediate. From the iron floor burst a gigantic glowing maw, surrounded by writhing tendrils that quickly ensnared the praetor golem. It dug its claws into the earth, trying to latch on, but as the maw lurched out of the ground, it pulled 'Vorinclex' into the air with it. Urabrask kept running as a hellion - not a Phyrexian hellion but a half-rotted uncompleat one - rose into the air, a column of broken scales and serrated legs. The golem struggled to escape its grasp, nearly tearing off one of the tendrils. For a moment, it looked like it might pull itself away.

Then the giant wurm twitched, and the golem disappeared down its gullet. 

The hellion half-receded into the ground, its front coiling in on itself until it all rested on the ground. Urabrask stared at a maw five times as wide as she was tall, a red-violet light shining from inside it. From beneath a patch of rotting flesh near the mouth, a familiar mite burrowed out, its passenger clearly pleased with itself. 

"Oh, Urabrask🎵." Sheoldred spoke from atop her new, gargantuan steed. "I found our ride, just where you said it'd be. Truly, even now, my necromancy is without equal. I think being bound to this mite actually helps with raising crawling, skittering things like this. Tell me, did my new pet swallow someone when it came up? I know it grabbed something, and it was too heavy to be you."

Urabrask cautiously approached the hellion, half-stunned with exhaustion and half-shocked at what she just saw. The hellions were a terror back when she was conquering what was once the Oxidda Ridge, and their fiery interiors caused trouble during early attempts to compleat them. She assumed that she'd never see their like again, but she also assumed that she'd never have to give one to a bratty necromancer.

"You...swallowed Vorinclex. Or at least, a golem made to impersonate him."

"Drat. I was hoping it was Slobad, the sanctimonious bore. Well, obliterating a stand-in for that lummox Vorinclex is delightful in its own way. I assume it was attacking you, yes? If you'll give me a moment..."

The hellion convulsed, a sickening, muffled crunch coming from beneath the earth.

"There, no longer a problem. Better it wasn't Slobad; you'd be so utterly peeved if you lost your last minion. Where is that goblin anyways?"

Urabrask shook her head. Better to have a dangerous Sheoldred than a treacherous Sheoldred she decided before sending Sheoldred off to go find the hellion, a concession made so she'd stop arguing and allow them to visit the Facade first. For now, she'd have to live with that choice. She leapt onto the firewurm, using her piston claws to get a firm grip.

"The beast threw Slobad across the Complex. Go find him and then head in that direction. Ixhel left that way to try and find who caused the attack."

"It's cute that you think you can give orders to me," said Sheoldred smugly. "But yes, I should fetch them. We praetors do need our meat shields." Her mite-body started crawling back into the flesh. "You'll want to dig in. Actually dig in. Trying to ride on the outside while it's burrowing won't end well."

Urabrask quickly carved out a scale from the wurm's carapace and clawed her way into the moving corpse. In one motion, the hellion slid back into the ground.

The elf and the angel circled each other, both of them trying to hide how exhausted they were from each other. 

Despite Ixhel's swift action earlier, some poison still got into her, sickly green pustules breaking out over her torso. She could feel it starting to curve into her mind. And even now, the stump of her arm still bled. On the other hand, she'd scored some superficial hits on Glissa and she could see the hunter starting to slip. This was no armored golem. With one solid strike, she could lop off the elf's head. She just had to get that one strike. 

Suddenly, the ground shook. The two were knocked off their feet as the hellion burst out of the ground. Ixhel gaped as the zombified creature wriggled out. This wasn't Phyrexian-made, and yet it looked like it, metal and teeth and nightmarish tendrils. Could the uncompleat really have such creatures? Perhaps the poison was also a hallucinogenic; it made more sense than this.

Then, a door of flesh swung out from the creature's body, swinging on iron hinges, and Urabrask and Slobad climbed out. That's when she was certain she was hallucinating.

"Ixhel!" Urabrask rushed to the angel's side, cradling her bleeding stump carefully in her own hands. "You've nearly gotten yourself killed!"

"Sorry..." Ixhel slurred out. "Had to...I had to..."

A few steps away, Slobad and Glissa met eyes for the first time since either of them had taken on the oil. The remnant memories of an ancient quest bubbled up to the surface. For a moment, they were just two outcasts trying to survive in a world that hated them. For a moment, they were still friends.

Slobad stepped forward to offer a hand, but Glissa recoiled. "Don't," she said, stepping back. "I'm not her anymore, and you're not him."

"Whoever I am still misses you, huh? Does whoever you are miss me?" 

Glissa took another step back, and another. She felt a headache coming on, like someone else was screaming inside her head, screaming as loud as her strained muscles.

"I've lost. I need to go," she said softly. 

"At least save the poor thing," Slobad gestured at the dying angel. "She doesn't need to die."

Glissa dug into a pack and tossed a gourd bottle at Slobad before running away. She dashed towards a nearby piece of iron rubble and pushed it aside, revealing a hidden shaft. She glanced back once at what used to be her friend before leaping in.

"No...I need to...she can't get away." Ixhel struggled in Urabrask's arms, trying to drag herself to the secret shaft. "She hurt you...I can't...have to defend..."

Slobad took the bottle over to Urabrask and, after getting a firm nod from the praetor, put the bottle to Ixhel's lips. She felt the poison fading as she started to fade into unconsciousness.

"The battle's over, Ixhel," whispered Urabrask. "Don't get yourself killed for my sake."

"Yes, Mistress," she murmured before everything went black.

Rotmaw Hellion 4BR [R]

Whenever Rotmaw Hellion enters the battlefield or attacks, you may return target creature card with power less than Rotmaw Hellion's from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step.

Undying

4/3

Chapter Text

Phyrexians did not dream.

A mind bound by the glistening oil was set in reality, not prone to the fanciful musing of an uncompleat mind. Atraxa had told Ixhel this, and Elesh had told Atraxa, so it must be true.

So was it something real that she was seeing? This vast ocean of oil, receding from the shores in the throes of some great tide, exposing the shattered bodies of lost Phyrexians, of her praetor beheaded and broken, of her mistress impaled and crushed? What rose from the oil on the horizon, that peering creature of the Chrome Host, watching her from atop metallic stilts?

Ixhel woke up to warmth, her body curled up next to a living hearth. Urabrask cradled her gently in her arms as she stirred fitfully from her visions.

"Ixhel, it's okay. We're safe."

At the sound of Urabrask's voice, Ixhel calmed down. 

"I...yes, Praetor. I'm okay. I'm safe," she murmured.

Ixhel propped herself up by two of her elbows, taking a look at her surroundings. The two Phyrexians were in a small alcove, a cave that looked like it'd been carved out of a wall of flesh. The walls and floor undulated constantly, glowing red and purple, a sickly flame glowing beneath a char-black brittle skin.

Urabrask saw the question Ixhel was about to ask on her face. "We're inside the hellion," she said. "I sent Sheoldred to raise its corpse to serve as a mobile base of operations. We're using it to carry us up to the Facade."

"The hellion? The...the giant worm you came out of?" Ixhel rubbed her head, trying to absorb this new information. "I was certain that was a hallucination."

"I wouldn't blame you. Careful touching the flesh. The scabbing is fragile, and what's beneath it isn't safe."

The angel frowned and ran a hand over the floor. She'd never seen, felt or imagined a bladder full of boiled dross, but she knew that was exactly how it felt.

"I'll keep that in mind," she said with a grimace, curling up closer to Urabrask and away from the floor. "Is everyone alright?"

Urabrask put an arm forward. Bits of her new filigree had been damaged, chipped away or crushed. "Minor damages for me. Slobad got knocked around but he's fine. No one was seriously hurt...besides you."

Ixhel glanced down at her own body. An iron cap had been placed over the stump where she ripped off her poisoned arm - Slobad's work. She shook her head. 

"Don't worry about my arm. I did what I needed to do to protect you, to serve you." She took Urabrask's hand in her own, smiling up at her. "There is nothing I will not do, nothing I will not sacrifice for a true and noble mistress. And in you, I've found one."

Urabrask flinched, her vents giving a puff of steam. 

"What's wrong, mistress?"

"It's nothing," lied Urabrask. 

"No, mistress, what's wrong? Did I misspeak? Please, I know I'm still recovering, but let me help you."

Ixhel felt Urabrask tense up, her body heat flaring. She gently set the angel on the floor and got up, looking away. 

"You're not like most creations of the Fair Basilica. So many of them are repressed and fearful. You're not free of that, but you have passion and pride underneath. When you showed up to 'rescue' me, I assumed you were just blindly carrying out your last orders. But you care about this place. About the system. About me. And that's beautiful about you."

"But I don't think I'm what you want. You want another Atraxa. Or another Elesh. Someone who'll tell you what to do and what to think and what to value. And I'm not either. Passions should run free without limit or chains. That's why I've chosen this form. That's why I do not hate the denizens of the Furnace for abandoning me for the invasion, though it stings. I don't want you to be bound to my will. I want you to be bound to yours."

Ixhel looked up at Urabrask, the closest thing she had to a heart racing. She thought she understood what they both wanted. She gave orders and she carried them out, so now they were mistress and servant. What was happening now, she didn't understand. 

"I don't understand, mistress. My passion is to serve you. What's wrong with that?"

"I'm saying...I don't want to be your mistress. I just want to be Urabrask. A praetor, and your superior, but not your owner and keeper."

This wasn't right. She must have done something wrong; Urabrask was just too kind and wonderful to accuse her of it. She struggled to her feet, her wings and tail flopping awkwardly around in the cramped space.  

"But...I want to serve you, mistress," she implored "Even if you were declared a traitor, I see your beauty within you. Do you see mine in me?"

"Of course I do, it's just-"

"Then let me serve you! Let me feel for you! Tell me what I need to do to make this right!"

Urabrask backed away as Ixhel stumbled towards her, her arms stretched out to plead. When Ixhel lunged forward, Urabrask leapt back, the skin of the floor nearly cracking under her talons.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, almost fearfully. "I shouldn't have brought this up until you fully recovered. We'll discuss this later."

Urabrask turned away, moving to crawl out of the alcove. Ixhel gritted her teeth, frustration bubbling up to the surface.

"Don't you leave me here! Stay here and tell me what to do to fix this!"

Urabrask stopped short, her fingers sinking into the fleshy, undead wall. Ixhel felt the temperature drop, the flame in Urabrask suddenly growing very, very small.

When the praetor spoke, her words were just as cold. "Are you ordering me...to order you? Are you so desperate for a mistress that you'll disobey a praetor's commands?" 

Ixhel gasped, and dropped into a contrite kneeling bow, ignoring the pain as she forced her body into position.

"I'm sorry, mistr-Praetor! I'm sorry, praetor! Please, punish me as you see fit."

She stayed in that position, face down, waiting for her chastisement. Mere minutes of waiting felt like days in her anticipation. But when she raised her head, Urabrask had already left. She stifled the upwelling of pain in her mind and curled up by the wall. Her punishment, so it seemed, was isolation. She'd accept it graciously. 

Half an hour later, there was a soft squelch as the familiar sound of skittering legs filled the room.

"Kzunk," Sheoldred started, crawling out of a hole in the wall, forced open by necromatic force. "Surprised you lived. I've heard of the stuff the elf used on you. Even with an antidote, it's remarkable you recovered."

Sheoldred frowned as the angel continued to stare blanky at the wall. 

"Kzunk! Ixhel! I know you can hear me!"

"Aren't you busy controlling the worm?" Ixhel said, still gloomily staring at the wall.

"Am I or am I not the greatest necromancer on Phyrexia?" She scoffed. "I can control it as long as I'm inside of it. Besides, we're already nearly there." 

"Then control it from somewhere else." Ixhel curled her wings around her, blocking her face from Sheoldred. "I'd like to be alone until we arrive."

Ixhel waited for the sounds of skittering legs fading into the distance. But instead, they came even closer.

"Tch, tch." Sheoldred said as she approached. "Urabrask really did a number on you, huh? For all that 'empathy' she's supposed to have, she doesn't understand how you work one bit."

She smirked as Ixhel recoiled in surprise.

"How did you...you were spying on us?" Ixhel yelled as she glared at Sheoldred. The head-on-a-mite shrugged as well as a head-on-a-mite could.

"Greatest necromancer on Phyrexia, remember? I know exactly what's happening everywhere in this glorified necrotic phallus. It honestly was tragic what she did to you. Now if it were me, I'd treat you just like the kzunk you are." 

Sheoldred paused.

"Actually, I could use a minion. Ixhel, would you like to serve me as-"

The angel flicked a wingtip at the praetor, who nimbly scuttled out of the way.

"Your loss. But I do mean it. That glorified stovepipe knows nothing about how to handle being appreciated. If she won't accept your service for what it is, you should just stop caring about her now. Save yourself some time, trust me."

Ixhel frowned and sat up straight, folding her wings up neatly and curling her tail around her loosely. She took a breath and composed herself.

"Even if I'm upset with her, and she with me, I still chose her, and I'm not going to leave her unless she orders me to." She spoke calmly, methodically, trying not to think about Sheoldred's goading. "I'll try my best to fix this. I know I can fix this. And if not, I'll know I tried."

"Tch." Sheoldred turned to crawl back into her tunnel. "Well, I suppose you're still a kzunk despite it all. Fine, I tried. I'll leave you to-"

"Was it Elesh Norn or Jin-Gitaxias who hurt you?"

Sheoldred flinched, her mite legs fumbling beneath her as she rapidly turned back towards the moody angel. 

"How did...what are you even talking about?"

"Urabrask said you three were...involved with introducing lust to Phyrexia, and that the same lust was drawing us together." Ixhel kept her cadence calm, looking straight at Sheoldred. "And when you spoke about affection not being accepted...it sounded like personal experience. So which one used lust to hurt you?"

Sheoldred blinked. She stepped back, quickly glancing behind her, as if she was about to skitter out of the conversation. Ixhel gathered up her legs in case she needed to pounce at her, but Sheoldred just sighed.

"You're just full of surprises, aren't you," Sheoldred muttered. "Fine. It'll be amusing to see your reaction anyways. But we'll need some privacy."

The flesh of the room undulated as the exit cinched shut like a drawstring. In the dark glow coming from beneath the surface, Sheoldred crawled up to Ixhel. 

"First of all, that smokestack is wrong. I can't be surprised; Jin-Gitaxias must have been the one to explain it to her and he doesn't care enough about emotion to distinguish. It wasn't lust. Lust isn't what's hurting you and it's not what hurt me. There's a second emotion that's often intertwined with it. 'Love'. The uncompleat use it to bind themselves to each other, the same way the oil binds us. When Jin-Gitaxias figured out how to push lust onto a Phyrexian mind, he took pains to isolate just the lust. Love is...volatile compared to lust. It affects self-preservation; it causes obsession; it creates weak points that can be exploited easily by anyone with a basic understanding of manipulation. Worst of all, it's nigh impossible to shut off artificially. With lust alone, at least we could conceivably control it."

"But...it doesn't work that way. Lust in a vacuum is fine, but when you start developing lust towards your peers, that causes you to find aspects of their person appealing. If the wires get crossed just the right way...emotions happen. Ones that stay even when the lust fades. I'm sure there's a more technical way to describe it, but I wasn't about to tell Jin what happened at the end between me and her."

"So it was..." Ixhel covered her mouth as she gasped. "But you two hated each other! Atraxa once said she could feel the tension whenever you and Elesh Norn were in the same room together." 

"We did hate each other. We hated each other so much that I tried to usurp her and she countered by brainwashing me and ripping my secrets out of my mind. But for one singular moment, after we'd driven each other to the brink of exhaustion...I saw her for what she was. And she saw me."

"I had her moaning," she said, smirking when Ixhel squirmed with discomfort. "Whining like a newt. At high levels of lust, the body warps to mimic uncompleat genitalia; I could have made her climax with just my finger. I wanted her and she wanted me." The smirk dropped from her face, a pensive look replacing it. "And we could have forgotten that we were enemies. Not forever, no, but for one soft moment."

"But she refused. Too cowardly to risk the status quo, she insisted that we go back to the way things were. So I doubled down and kept opposing her, hoping that I might be able to get the upper hand and make it work, somehow. And now she's dead and I'm...this." 

Ixhel watched as Sheoldred gazed down at her mite body, whose jaws clacked back up at her. When she asked Sheoldred about who hurt her, she was just trying to knock her off her high horse. But the praetor had weaved a portrait of her own bitterness that showed, for a few moments, what was under the surface: a lot of pain, and a lot of loneliness. Enough to spill this secret to the first person she found sufficiently non-threatening.

"So yeah," Sheoldred continued, her usual snarkiness leaking back into her voice. "Urabrask is a coward just like Elesh. Quit while you're behind. Be smart, and don't let yourself get-" 

"I'm sorry you were hurt." Sheoldred stopped as Ixhel extended a hand. "I spoke out of turn earlier because I was hurting, and you've been hurting all this time; I understand why you've been so intolerable now. Urabrask told me that emotions are nothing to be ashamed of. They tell you what you need. Don't feel bad about needing this."

Sheoldred looked at the hand, then up to Ixhel. For a moment, she trembled, as if she was about to cry. Then, a jolt shook the floor, knocking Ixhel over and sending Sheoldred bouncing around the room.

"That...was us hitting the surface," said Sheoldred as she rolled back onto her feet. With her distracted, the room's entrance began to gape open once more. "We should regroup with the others and go find the Domini. We don't have enough time to spare."

"Yeah...we should." Ixhel got to her feet, still unsteady but ready to get to work. "But don't forget what I said."

Sheoldred just scowled. "Don't forget what I said either," she muttered before crawling out. Ixhel followed, carefully easing her wings out.

Emotions would have to wait; there was a world to save.

Ixhel, Mender of Phyrexia 3WGR [M]

Legendary Creature - Phyrexian Angel

Flying, first strike, trample, toxic 3

Whenever you put one or more counters on a permanent or player, gain that much life.

Whenever you attack with three or more creatures with toxic, proliferate.

3/4

Chapter Text

Unctus knew they were coming. He knew exactly where they were, even as he was occupied with the chemical balance of a quicksilver sample. As soon as Jin-Gitaxias's death was confirmed, he wasted no time before cannibalizing the labs surrounding his for space and...raw materials. His meldweb, the network of organic brains that earned him a place of authority under the old praetor, now stretched across a square mile of the Surgical Bays. When he thought, it was with the brainpower of a city. When he watched, it was with a thousand eyes. Nothing in his territory escaped his gaze, including the two other would-be praetors whom he had invited.

He heard heavy footsteps across the roof of the lab before someone leapt onto the observation deck, heavy enough to cause the chrome to creak. 

"There is a perfectly good entrance on the ground floor, Ezuri," he said as he adjusted the lens array over the sample.

"It was a good climb," said Ezuri. His skin shone from his sweat, from the tainted viridian blood flowing underneath it. Unctus always wondered why, after being blessed with the intellect of Jin-Gitaxias, Ezuri chose to delve more into base strength. It made him a menace as Jin's enforcer but not much else. "Where's the Overseer?"

"He shall arrive in 47 seconds. You may be able to climb the exterior but some of us have to take the stairs."

The meldweb was running analyses and simulations on Ezuri every second, assessing his temperament, his ability, how likely he was to betray Unctus. It wasn't likely; Unctus wouldn't have bothered to invite him if he thought he couldn't behave. But everything was unexpected in the wake of the invasion's failure. It was best to be certain; that's why he set up this meeting.

In 47 seconds exactly, the door to the rooftop lab opened. A golem walked in, a prototype guard model on stilts, followed by another, a many-eyed observation model. Eight golems walked in, each one with a different design and purpose, and formed two rows on each side of the door. Finally, Purity Overseer Malcator walked in, the diminutive loxodon garbed in armor and a blue cape.

"I have come, Grand Metatect, representing the eight intact sectives," he said. Unctus rolled his eyes as he pushed the lens array away. The golems were a political gesture as much as a bodyguard squadron. While Unctus had the meldweb and Ezuri had his uncanny strength, Malcator was merely an overseer. He was only at the table because the sectives that once brought him inventions to be approved now looked to him for guidance. 

A bureaucrat. A brute. Normally they wouldn't be worth treating as equals. But sometimes science requires collaboration. Sometimes survival does as well.

"Overseer. Claw of Progress. None of us want to be here, so I won't waste time on pleasantries." He walked past Ezuri to the observation deck and pointed towards a wriggling, hulking figure on the horizon. "Tekuthal is growing larger. Drivnod keeps dragging corpses into the sphere from elsewhere. None of us have the ability to confront them on our own. The logical solution is a collaborative exercise to dispose of them. My intellect, Ezuri's base cunning and Malcator's numbers. Questions?"

"Pass," said Ezuri. Unctus sighed. The simulations warned him this might happen but it didn't make it any less insufferable.

"That was not a question."

"Ezuri's right. The behavior of the Domini has always been obtuse. It's possible that whatever they're doing is vital for the plane's survival." Malcator buffed his helmet with his cloak, blue eyes peering curiously at Unctus from behind it. "Also we don't trust you."

Unctus walked back into the lab, back to the quicksilver sample.

"This sample was taken from the sea near Tekuthal two days ago. At first glance, there's nothing wrong with it. However..."

Unctus opened a sealed box and took out a lobe of compleated Neurok brain, too damaged to be useful in the meldweb. He dipped it into the sample, which started fizzing and sparking. Ezuri hissed and Malcator covered his eyes as the lobe sparked like a broken electrode before melting into nothing.

"It causes complete internal collapse of any substance using the glistening oil. And it's spreading."

The other two look at the remains of the sample, Ezuri with disgust and Malcator with disdain. They glance at each other before nodding at Unctus.

"So do you have a plan?" said Malcator.

"Dozens. But the one with the best yields for the three of us is a mindsplice harness, a massive one. The sectives should be able to rig up the necessary wiring, and Ezuri can attach it to Tekuthal. Then I'll simply use the meldweb to overpower it and force it to clean up the sea or kill himself and Drivnod."

"And leave you in control of the Dominus," Malcator said dismissively. 

"As if you wouldn't build a self-desctruct into the harness. If we pursue this with the necessary suspicion, we should all break even and we can return to arguing over who is the superior leader of the Surgical Bays. Ezuri understands that; that's why he's not complaining like a newt."

Unctus turned to Ezuri to demonstrate his implacability in the face of sheer realpolitik. But Ezuri had stepped out of the conversation, looking out from the observation deck, his face frozen in horror. 

Tekuthal loomed over the horizon, quicksilver flowing up and past him to the ceiling. Beneath them, the quicksilver receded from the base of the labs, leaving glistening treacle and the leftover bodies of hundreds of failed experiments. Unctus backed away from the deck as Tekuthal began to float towards him, the quicksilver following him across the ceiling, drops of it melting whatever it touched. Every time it landed on a lab, Unctus felt a bit of the meldweb shriek out and die. 

"Malcator! Ezuri! There's no time! We kill it now!" Unctus readied the hooks and claws at the ends of half of his limbs: the gifts that compleation gave him. But the others didn't move. Instead, Malcator turned to him, his tusks turned to tentacles, a single glowing eye looking out his face.

"And you would be the new praetor? Pathetic. The minds of thousands at your beck and call and the best you can do is 'I'll outthink it'? I thought better of you, vedalkens." Unctus fell to the ground, clutching his head as he felt his extrapolated mind erode. That voice. He knew that voice. He hated that voice. Why did he hate that voice?

Someone yanked him away by the ankle. Ezuri, his body now sporting black spines and his viridian green turned to an ominous red, dragged him across the deck. Unctus dug into the floor with his hands and hand-tools, trying to gain traction, but Ezuri chucked him off the edge. As he fell, the coagulated oil beneath him seemed to rise up, the corpses inside of it clambering onto him, pulling him into the oil. Unctus struggled and cursed and begged and-

And then he was in a capsule. It had been years since he'd touched blinkmoth serum; Jin-Gitaxias hoarded the stuff like a dragon's gold. But now it filled the tiny glass prison he was in. Now he was choking on it, the air tube previously attached to his face knocked away in his panic. Through the murk of the serum, he saw a four-armed figure peering at him, the all-too familiar glow of the meldweb behind him. No, not any four-armed figure; that was himself. And he was making a face.

Unctus's doppleganger opened the capsule just enough to reattach the air tube. In that moment, he saw the tendrils making up most of its structure, tendrils leading from the to a massive floating figure up above, a writhing mess centered around one glowing blue eye:Tekuthal. The Dominus, through his Unctus puppet, resealed the capsule and sent the vedalken back into unconsciousness. It was a pity that the meldweb was linked to the mind of such a creature, but the raw intellectual power was worth keeping him alive. 'Unctus' started another simulation, letting the trapped vedalken succumb to another nightmare in the meantime, and examined the face of the angel that the meldweb kept predicting, over and over again.

Phyrexians did not dream.

It was a mathematical certainty. Unctus had performed experiments on hundreds of mewling test subjects and found no way to mimic their slumbering distress.

So what was this nightmare he kept reliving? This vast ocean of quicksilver, receding from the shores in the throes of some great tide, exposing the shattered bodies of lost Phyrexians, his intellect stripped and broken, his schemes split open like a dying pig? What rose from the oil on the horizon, that peering creature of the Chrome Host, accompanied by cruel and vindictive judgment?

Blinkmoth Prison 7U [R]

Artifact

Imprint — When Blinkmoth Prison enters the battlefield and at the beginning of your upkeep, you may exile an artifact creature card from a graveyard.

1UUU, T, Put a card exiled by Blinkmoth Prison on the bottom of its owner's deck: Draw X cards, where X is the mana value of that card.

Chapter Text

Light was a curious thing on New Phyrexia. 

Originally it simply shone down on the plane from the five suns that orbited it. The praetors felt the power pulsing from them, the raw mana that each of them emulated. But when Elesh remade the plane in the image of Old Phyrexia, she built the Monumental Facade over the plane's original surface, the constant shifting of statues and obelisks creating an eternal cloud of detritus between the suns and Phyrexia. Since then, each subsphere handled light in its own way. In the Autonomous Furnace, the glow of the undying flames reflected off the ceiling and down onto the rest of the plane, coating everything in a fiery glow. The Maze didn't need much light - most of its inhabitants hunted by smell or sound just as well as they could sight - but the copper trees often had a biolescent sort of rust-fungus near their heights. Jin-Gitaxias wired up the Surgical Bays with a light system of his own creation, able to concentrate light on a given area for examination purposes - or just to sear his enemies like a child with a magnifying glass. The Dross Pits was dimly lit at best, as Sheoldred preferred it, but glowing pools of acid and clouds of toxic gas provided enough light for visitors. The Fair Basilica simply glowed from every surface - Elesh's light, as Ixhel was told. 

None of the four had seen sunlight in ages, besides Ixhel. And even she wasn't ready. 

Ixhel winced as she stepped out of the hellion, pure, unfiltered sunlight hitting her right in the face. The others fared even worse. Slobad flung his goggles from his eyes; Urabrask covered her head until her vents could produce enough smoke to blot some of the light out; Sheoldred scurried backwards back into the hellion, hissing wildly.

The mite-mounted praetor glared at Ixhel from the safety of the shadows. "Ixhel, you useless kzunk! Why didn't you warn us about this new hellish sun?"

"It wasn't like this when I came up here," the angel retorted, gritting her teeth. "The skies have cleared somehow."

"It might be a side-effect of whatever the Domini are doing. We need to-" Urabrask broke her sentence off with a growl, seared by an errant ray of light that got past her smokeshield. "Slobad! The wreck of the Vorinclex golem is still in the hellion. Take it apart and make us some visors."

The goblin didn't hear her, too busy covering his eyes with one hand while searching for his discarded goggles with the other. Ixhel managed to grab the goggles before he accidentally crushed them. She didn't look at Urabrask. She carefully slipped the goggles back over Slobad's face while shielding him from the sun with her wings. When she looked up, she realized that Urabrask was staring right at her, and turned away before the praetor could say anything. She wasn't sure if her punishment was over, if she was allowed to talk to her again. She wasn't sure if she could face her again just yet. Sheoldred's musings still rattled in her head. Regardless of whether Urabrask accepted her as her minion, until she untangled the web of emotions in her head, she was useless.

"Urabrask, shall I go scout while you three adjust to the sunlight?" said Ixhel coolly.

"I...yes, that should be fine." 

She took off immediately, before Urabrask could squeeze out a 'thank you'. The praetor followed her ascent for a few moments, her expression inscrutable, and then skulked back to the hellion, dragging Slobad with her.

Ixhel flew. Flying away from her troubles was becoming second-nature to her.

She tried to actually scout for a while, but the sunlight shone off of the glimmervoid sand, making the whole Facade glow bright enough to make looking down painful. So she just flew over the gleaming white monuments that randomly dotted the landscape, mimicking the forms of the Phyrexians that lived below. For a moment, it felt like she was back in the Basilica, past the alabaster monuments to Elesh's greatness made out of her detractors. But then she'd look at one and see the lack of care that everything in the Monumental Facade had: 

•  a statue of Sheoldred with only six eyes, two of them sliding into the others
•  a carved obelisk featuring Jin-Gitaxias with malformed hands 
•  a raised, malformed hand holding a model of New Phyrexia that was missing the furnace layer
•  statues of all seven Steel Thanes, all of them with malformed hands 

She let it all wash over her, never focusing on one edifice for too long. It just reminded her of a past to which she could no longer return. It used to be so simple. There were those who should be lauded, respected and served, and those who should not. Elesh and hers on one side, and the traitors and the uncompleat on the other. The boundaries were gone now. The rules didn't matter. She was supposed to accept that this jumble, praetors and minions working shoulder to shoulder, was normal now. Throwing figures together at random was something the Monumental Facade did, not real life.

Finally, she saw a statue she couldn't just fly past. Over the horizon came the giant visage of Atraxa, her arm oustretched. Inside her heart, Ixhel felt something crack. She landed on the statue's outstretched hands, its twisted fingers, facing away from the statue's face, letting her wings rest. She told herself that letting her wings rest was the only reason she landed, again and again until she eventually gave up. She turned her eyes upon her absent mistress and oily tears ran down her face, a sob choked back in her throat. She dried her face and took a deep breath and looked up again, steadying her soul until she could speak:

"Mistress, I miss you."

"I miss you. I miss obeying you. I miss trying to be better for your sake. I miss knowing where my place is."

"I don't know what's wrong with the world. I don't know what's wrong with me. Everybody treats me like I'm a fool or like I'm damaged, but you never did. I was your perfect creation. You were my mistress. You were my mother. I-"

Loved you, her thoughts finished as her words faltered, some last bit of her former self trying to self-censor. But she knew what she knew now. It seemed so simple now that she had the words for it. I loved her and wanted to serve her and worship her and kiss her and kiss her and kiss her and...

And be kissed. And loved back. Her mind flashed back to when Atraxa saw her own creation, Vishgraz. The utter shame she felt when Atraxa chastised her for trying to create. For trying to be like her. For adoring her rather than serving her.

"Are you thinking of me, wherever you are? Your perfect creation? Do you miss me? Would you still love me, even with the company I'm keeping?" Ixhel knew better. Ixhel knew the answer would be no. But she still looked up at the stone face, hoping for a different answer. 

"It's not like I'm trying to disappoint you," she argued to the statue. "I didn't mean to insult you with Vishgraz. I didn't mean to run from the battle. I wasn't trying to join the traitor praetors! I didn't plan on falling in love with one of them!" Still no answer. She starts again, louder. "Maybe it wasn't even my fault. Maybe you didn't make me right. Or maybe this is just how I'm supposed to be!" Still nothing. She slammed the butt of her spear down, hard enough to leave a crack. 

"I trusted you! I always trusted you, trusted Elesh, trusted the Orthodoxy!" She punctuated each sentence with another blow of the spear. "She was supposed to be incorruptible! We were supposed to take the entire multiverse! But she was seduced and we were routed and now she's dead and you're probably dead and I..."

She threw down the spear.

"Maybe I should have died too. This new world is no place for someone like me. I don't know what to do with love or lust or any of that. I just want to do a good job, and Urabrask doesn't want me to. But was I even doing a good job before? Maybe if I was you'd be here safe with me...or you'd have brought me with you and I'd get to die defending you."

The sound of crumbling stone broke her out of her misery. The crack she'd made earlier was widening rapidly, the stone groaning under her. Before she could fly away, Atraxa's hand snapped, sending her tumbling to the ground. She just barely managed to slow her fall with her wings, diving into the sand rather than plummeting onto it. She pulled herself up, shaking the sand from her wings and sinew, and looked up at the now-broken statue. Some part of her knew that she should feel more guilty about this, guilty that she besmirched even a false image of her old mistress, and it was upset that she wasn't.

She tested her wings, ready to rejoin the others. Perhaps whatever Urabrask wanted out of her would be good enough, or at least...better than this. But before she could, a length of glowing rope shot out of the sand, looped around her body and pulled her into the earth. Five more looped around her arms, her legs, her wings. She barely had time to scream before she was pulled under, leaving nothing left but her erstwhile mistress's stony disdain.

Atraxa's Memorial 2(2/G)(2/U)(2/W)(2/B) [M]

Legendary Artifact

At the beginning of combat on your turn, creatures you control get your choice of flying, deathtouch, vigilance, lifelink or +1/+1 until end of turn. Repeat this process for each oil counter on Atraxa’s Memorial.

At the beginning of your end step, put an oil counter on Atraxa’s Memorial.

Chapter Text

Slobad took a deep breath, counted to three, and opened his eyes. It still stung, but if he kept his goggles on, he could look up at the sky for a few moments. 

It'd been centuries since the last time he saw the sky, one glimpse of the suns between five years of torture and centuries of lying broken and rotting in the mycosynth as the oil transformed him, one moment of peace as his reward. He'd saved Mirrodin, undone the years of exploitation committed by the secret mastermind at the earth's core, sacrificed the chance to wander the multiverse forever to restore the lives of creatures long dead, creatures who killed him in a blind panic shortly after their salvation. At the time, it was still worth it. Despite the lack of gratitude, the indignity of his death, Glissa got to survive, and that was worth the sacrifice. But now he saw his friend's face as it looked on him in utter horror, their bond now something to recoil from. The oil was more bitter in his mouth than usual. Compleation was supposed to bind people together, not push them apart.

Despite his misgivings, the memory was sharp in his mind; that's what let him see it. Ixhel had mentioned to him that the suns had gone missing, but the entire sky was different. The sun was further away, as were the clouds that didn't quite mask its blinding light. The suns weren't what was stolen; it was New Phyrexia, smuggled to some new location. The suns shone raw mana down onto Mirrodin once, providing great power to those who called upon them; perhaps that was why the Domini had gone feral. Perhaps stopping the Domini wouldn't be enough to keep New Phyrexia from dying. A dire conclusion, huh?

Slobad got up from his perch atop the hellion and slid down its side to the glimmervoid sand beneath. Below, Sheoldred and Urabrask sulked in the shade, the argument that led Slobad to distract himself with astronomy in the first place still smoldering between them. 

"How long are we going to wait for her to not come back," said Sheoldred. It was hard to tell whether she was more irritated with Urabrask or with the cumbersome copper sun-visor Slobad bolted onto her head. Urabrask scratched at her own visor, the result of Slobad repurposing the remains of the Vorinclex golem in the hellion's gut. 

"It's only been an hour and there's a lot of ground to cover up here. She'll be back." She kept scratching and scratching at the visor, as if she'd be rending something else if she didn't keep her hands busy.

The two praetors glared at each other. The goblin recalled his time under Raksha; the powerful often used arguments over practical concerns to mask concerns of social impropriety. Something happened between the Furnace Layer and the Monumental Facade with the angel and none of the three were handling it well. 

"Praetor Urabrask, Praetor Sheoldred." The two glanced at the goblin as he landed, picking up his hammer from the ground. "Ixhel is hunting for the Domini, huh? If we find them, either we'll find her or she'll find us."

"You make a good point, Slobad," said Urabrask,  If she doesn't return in a few minutes, we'll go hunting ourselves." 

Sheoldred sneered at Slobad and muttered something under her breath: filla, rhyming slang for cunning little swamp sneaks. Slobad ignored her; the argument was settled without either of them losing face and that's what mattered. They were making too much of a fuss about this. He knew what it was like to have to rediscover yourself after being forced from your own pack. Ixhel just needed some time alone.

Ixhel glared at her captors as she dangled from the ceiling from hexgold-infused ropes. Everywhere she looked, it seemed like another of the beak-faced myr was looking at her, with more poking their heads in from the small cavern's entrance. 

After all she'd faced so far, it seemed undignified to be routed by one of the lowest creatures on New Phyrexia's totem pole. The subservient race of preternatural tinkerers only escaped complete irrelevance by virture of their skill with minute technical work. No praetor wanted them after the initial conquest, usually preferring to smelt them into raw materials rather than compleat them. Too unimaginative and passionless for Urabrask. Far too scrawny and thinky for Vorinclex. Elesh couldn't impress upon them the elegance of the Alabaster Host, and Jin wouldn't use one without modifying it so extensively that he could not be accused of plagiarism - not that the long-forgotten creator of the myr was around to care. Only the Steel Thanes went out of their way to capture and compleat them, their internal struggles needing every hand they could craft. 

On some level, their existence was something of a faux-pas. A race of intelligent mechanical creatures completely devoid of the glistening oil but lacking in the foibles of the uncompleat, those treacherous emotions that were so easily crushed by Phyrexian soldiers. All they wanted was to scuttle and build and serve. Ixhel once saw Atraxa decapitate a host of myr that had been idly repairing two fallen war machines, one Mirran, one Phyrexian. When she timidly asked why, Atraxa had said brusquely that it was ridiculous that such creatures thought themselves worthy to repair Phyrexian flesh as if it was just another machine, as if it was the same as the inferior opponent who felled it.

Ixhel considered what Atraxa would do if she found out that she'd fallen for a myr-made trap. No doubt she'd browbeat her for her incompetence, hoisting her by the neck so she could look down at her properly. Oddly enough the image didn't fill her with dread, but rather a longing nostalgia. And something else, something hotter, that she reflexively avoided thinking about. 

Something whipped against her throat; that wasn't a fantasy. She returned to reality to find that two new figures had joined her audience: a white-furred goblin, covered in hexgold armaments; and a one-eyed fair-haired human whose glare was as sharp at the whip coiled in her hand. 

"You," the Auriok spat. "We need answers. Give them up now and we'll make your death quick."

Sheoldred led the scouting party. Mites had sensitive legs, the better to rush into hiding when larger Phyrexians or uncompleat came stomping by. She found that she could pick up faint vibrations that differed from the usual shifting of monuments, and claimed the chance to have authority while separate from her hellion steed.

The two furnace refugees followed a good ways behind, Urabrask occasionally skittering up a monument to look for Ixhel. Slobad watched with reserved stoicism as he dragged a makeshift sledge behind him with the rest of the demolished copper golem. He was certain that his engineering would be required again once they found their quarry; better to have his materials on hand, huh?

After hopping down from the skull of a slightly-misshapen Vorinclex simulacrum, Urabrask turned to the goblin.

"You need help with that, Slobad?"

Slobad paused. He could need the help - he was built for hardy forgework, not trudging through shifting sand - but a praetor rarely offered assistance so readily, not even Urabrask. 

"Thank you, Praetor." Slobad stepped back as Urabrask easily grabbed the sledge, the extra weight barely affecting her stride. They walked in silence as Slobad waited for the other hammer to drop.

"Slobad. You used to be uncompleat, didn't you? Not created from a newt like the rest of us"

Slobad grunted. He saw where this was going, and Sheoldred was far enough ahead that she wouldn't interject. He could use less tact than usual.

"I was, Praetor Urabrask. And while I never took a lover myself, I knew several who did. You need help with Ixhel, huh?"

Urabrask coughed sheepishly, a gout of pinkish steam spouting from her shoulders. She glanced at Sheoldred, who was occupied with a particularly unflattering statue of herself, and started whispering.

"Only now, at the end of the world, do I realize how restrictive it was to be 'praetor'. The need to be feared and obeyed and...serrated. But with our number reduced to four, I didn't need to posture anymore; my authority was self-evident. And after all that, she wanted to drag me back to the way things were, when I'd have to rally the furnace through speeches and threats and beatings! I finally have a chance to handle myself healthily and she wants me to be a tyrant again so she can cower before me."

"It's all she knew under Atraxa, huh? She doesn't know another way to show love but to cower."

"Love? She feels lust. It's Jin's sadomasochistic mind virus, I'm certain, though I have no idea how he got her with it."

"...Are you sure?"

Urabrask growled under her breath, the pink steam turning to black smog.

"I know what this is from past experience. I indulged Jin-Gitaxias's experiments here and there as part of our dealings. I feel...shameful about it in retrospect. So eager to put Jin in his place that I got myself rolled up in his machinations. At some point we'll figure out what Jin-Gitaxias put in place to infect us with lust and she'll realize that she was fooled. I don't want her to feel the same shame once she realizes her mistake as well."

"Your mistake, huh? You're punishing her for your guilt."

Urabrask stopped short, twin spouts of fiery ash spitting from her back vents. Slobad quickly grabbed a sheet of copper from the sledge and held it between him and the falling embers. One of them nearly missed Sheoldred, who quickly turned around to cuss out the two before returning to scouting. The spouts of ash went silent, as Urabrask looked at the ground sheepishly.

"I want her to be happy," she muttered. "not just following orders because I'm in charge. Even if I didn't, losing one of our few fighters will make stopping the Domini so much harder. What do you advise, old one?"

"Talk to her. Be honest. Find a compromise that works for both of you, huh?" Slobad shrugged. "I had a lonely past life, but what bonds I had were based in collaboration towards a shared goal. She has something she wants; make sure she can get it or is okay without it, huh?"

The Auriok glared at Ixhel, turning her whip in her hands. Even in her fury she did it carefully; it was covered in Ixhel's corrupting blood.

"Nothing? All of the other Mirrans are gone? I don't believe you. Tell us the truth. Where are you hiding them? What have you done?"

Ixhel looked back at her tormentor warily. She knew the correct answer wasn't what her captors actually wanted but she couldn't think of a lie that couldn't be popped in an instant.

"It's the truth. I've been through every layer since the war ended and I've found nothing."

Ixhel didn't even wince as the hexgold whip slashed across her torso again. 

"Liar!"

She lashed out at Ixhel twice more before the goblin pulled her back. In a happier time, Ixhel would have laughed at a goblin being the voice of reason. But right now, all she could focus on was her plight. 

"What reason do I have to lie to you about this?" Ixhel spat back at her torturer.

"To hide the others from us as you convert them into more soldiers? To drain us of any hope?" 

The woman raised her hand to deal out another lash, but this time the goblin held her arm back.

"Enough."

"I'm not done with her yet, Rhuk."

"She doesn't know anything, and we don't have time to waste. We're low on food and hexgold, Asha. You can drown Arek's loss in oil later."

Rhuk drew two hexgold axes from the small armory strapped to his body.

"The Phyrexian dies now."

Ixhel struggled weakly against her bounds as the two uncompleat argued with each other. Every movement caused the hexgold-infused bindings to sink deeper into her flesh. The goblin was right. She was going to die here.

She wanted to cry. Bad enough to fall when New Phyrexia still needed her. Worse to fall in isolation, away from the Alabaster Host, away from even her makeshift alliance, where her body may never be recovered to be remade anew. She was about to die completely alone.

Then, in the depths of the oil inside her, she felt companionship. Someone nearby was an ally. She opened her eyes and scanned the room for any other Phyrexians. There, those three myr sitting close to her. She could see parts of their beaks and skulls growing sharp: the telltale signs of early compleation. This Asha hadn't been careful about her torment. Her blood had splashed on some of the myr audience. If she could call to the oil on them, she'd have allies.

Phyrexia, serve me, she thought. She knew that commands could be given through the oil; Elesh and Atraxa did so all the time. She was nowhere close to either of them in terms of commanding presence but she could still try. Fellow servants of the oil, free me! The myr sat static. She called again and again but the oil was still too fresh, her control too weak. 

Behind the myr, Rhuk had finally won the argument. He advanced on Ixhel, flipping his axes in his hands. Ixhel closed her eyes, trying to block out what was about to happen with a pleasant thought. She tried to focus on the last time Atraxa had truly complimented her, but her mind drifted instead to sitting next to Urabrask at the pit's edge, her hand on the inside of her thigh, the feeling that a kiss was only a moment away...

She heard the goblin cry out. She opened her eyes and saw one of the three infected myr slamming its beak directly into Rhuk's face, sending the goblin flailing backwards and his weapons flying all over. The other two had clambered around Asha's legs, clutching onto her as they stroked her body, sending her into a shrieking fury. It took her a moment to realize what had happened; her commands couldn't get to the myr through the oil but her fantasies apparently could.

She pushed the thought into the back of her mind; she'd have to survive this trap in order to be embarrassed about how she was saved. She stretched out her arm as far as it'd go, trying to grab one of Rhuk's lost weapons, eventually grabbing a small sword. She sliced through her bindings and flew out of the cavern. As the Mirrans shouted behind her, she pushed her wings as quickly as they could go. After another brush with death, she focused on one thing: she would give Urabrask that kiss, no matter what the cost.

Hexgold Lashtrap 1RW [U]

Artifact

When Hexgold Lashtrap enters the battlefield, exile target creature with toxic or mana value 3 or less until it leaves the battlefield.

4RW, T: Create a 2/2 red Rebel creature token. You may attach an equipment you control to it. Otherwise, put a +1/+1 counter on it. 

Chapter Text

Ixhel didn't have an easy flight ahead of her. Mirrex was never pleasant to fly through. Besides the fact that the ceiling was unusually low, making maneuvering tricky and speed difficult, the sphere didn't resonate with the power of the praetors or even the energy of the five suns. It was a gravestone the size of a planet. But the Domini's destruction on the plane's surface added new complications. The angel heard the ceiling crack above her and had to roll sideways to avoid being crushed by metal and glimmer.

The debris landed in a heap on the ground; it sat there for a few seconds before being sliced up by Asha's whip. She led the chase, cutting through anything standing in her way. Rhuk was lagging behind, but only because he was busy taking aim. Two axes flew through the air directly at Ixhel, forcing her to bank left. She grazed her right wing on the ceiling and nearly tumbled. Still she kept going, driven by that one vision, that one kiss. 

"I am not your enemy!" she yelled behind her. "The plane is coming undone. I'm trying to save it before we all die, including you!"

"Lies!" screeched Asha. 

"I don't think she's spoken false this whole time, Asha," said Rhuk. Ixhel started to turn around at the show of confidence, only to narrowly avoid a javelin aimed right at her head. "We'll just have to save the plane after we kill her. Not like she'll spare us once the plane's fixed."

She stopped talking and focused on staying ahead. She just needed a way out of the Mirrex. On the Facade or in the Furnace, she'd be able to simply fly so fast they couldn't keep up. There were few official exits from Mirrex, as it held no value after it was stripped clean, and she’d have trouble figuring out where they’d be after getting dragged and disoriented through the bottom of the Facade. 

The ceiling cracked again, and another black sheet of metal fell in the distance, the sand of the Facade falling through the hole it left. Something clicked in her brain. If the Domini are causing the Facade to fall on Mirrex, then there must be somewhere where they’ve blown a hole clean through, any sand long since emptied out. She shifted direction towards the fall of glimmersand, watching the cracks in the ceiling and following the distant thuds above.

Up above, the rest of her allies found a danger as cutting as Asha’s whip.

“I’m realizing,” Slobad said carefully, “that we never came up with a plan on what to do when we found the Domini, huh?” His eyes were staring intently at the ground, at the command that Solphim had both decreed and burned into the sand, the letters seared into the false sand: STAY AWAY. The two praetors didn’t respond, neither wanting to admit poor planning nor, worse, draw the attention of the Domini: the cyclopean Solphim, looming in her gown of blazing spears, and the insectoid Zoprandel, standing a story or two higher than even Solphim. Each of them dwarfed even Urabrask. 

The two Domini had returned to their work, treating the arrival of two praetors as a momentary inconvenience, Solphim would dictate that a monument should be torn down for parts, her words often doing most of the work of slicing it apart. Zopandrel would rip the rest down with her scythe-shaped claws, smashing the base to pieces with her legs and clawing it out of the floor. Together, they dragged the debris to the base of a looming tower that sparkled in the sun’s light, easily ten times taller than either of the goliaths that created it. Solphim would melt the debris with heat before Zopandrel pressed it into the tower’s base, growing it ever taller and taller. 

“I’m not even sure if it’s safe to interfere at this point,” murmured Urabrask. “If that tower topples now, it’s smashing straight through Mirrex into the Autonomous Furnace. Might even break into the Maze.”

Ixhel could help us take it down safely … if she was here she thought. There was still no sight of her, but as long as she had to play leader, she couldn’t let her fear show.

Sheoldred hissed with annoyance from behind Slobad. “Well we must do something . Urabrask, You were the one who wanted us to deal with this before protecting my precious Dross Pits from Gitaxias’s deadly quicksilver. Deal with it.”

Urabrask huffed, gouts of steam blowing out the sides of her face, before approaching Solphim again. This wasn’t her first time encountering the Mayhem Dominus. She would occasionally have to keep her from interfering with vital supplies, guiding her to less valuable slag that would satisfy her chaotic commands. She had never been foolhardy enough to interfere with her like this before - but there was a first time for all sorts of mistakes. 

“Why are you building this tower?”

COME HELP AND YOU WILL SEE was the first response Urabrask had to dodge. YOU LACK THE RIGHT TO EVEN GAZE UPON THE BRIDGE forced her to tumble backwards. YOU ARE NOT THE MASTER OUR MASTER managed to catch her across the chest with the last letter, a burning scar. She retreated, scrabbling back on her hands and knees, clutching the wound carefully. Heat could only do so much to the Lady of the Furnace, but this body has far less armor than her old one. 

“...Master? That is new.” Slobad’s face looked on pensively as he helped Urabrask get back to her feet. “Who would be mad enough to try controlling the Domini, huh?”

“Dozens,” said Sheoldred with a huff. “But I can’t think of anybody alive who’d manage to control one, let alone multiples. If anybody could stumble into it, it definitely wouldn’t be one of the schmucks in the Maze or the Furnace. Perhaps they’ve chosen a master of their own volition?”

Slobad and Sheoldred continued to debate as Urabrask sized up their quarry. She was the only one fast enough to approach Solphim without getting immediately seared, but she couldn’t rely on a repeat of her Vorinclex strategy - Zoprandel could easily pry her away if she grabbed onto Solphim. Slobad was a more defensive fighter and fairly resistant to burns, but one bad strike from Zoprandel could undo him. Sheoldred could simply drop the hellion on them, but if it got destroyed, they’d be stuck using the official routes through the spheres - almost certainly being watched. 

Someone had to make the hard choices. And if a praetor can't, then what use are they?

“Slobad, maybe we can knock down one of the monuments and roll it into-”

An immense eruption of sand interrupted Urabrask before she could continue, blasting out of a nearby crater. Even the Domini paused briefly to observe it, though they quickly went back to their demolitions. The three glanced at each other nervously before they went to the eruption point, Urabrask leading.

By the time they reached it, the sand geyser had given way to a sinkhole. At the bottom, the familiar worn glimmervoid of Mirrex could be seen, reflecting the light of the new sun. And on the edge, a familiar winged figure attempted to climb over the edge before the sand could whisk her back down.

“Ixhel?” Urabrask grabbed her hand before she even finished recognizing her. Slobad quickly grabbed his praetor before she too went over the edge. Pulling together, they managed to pull Ixhel to safety. 

“Barely *cough* made it,” she wheezed out. “Found a weak point but *cough* had to break through the sand.”

Urabrask cleared the sand off and helped her to her feet, only for the praetor’s face to darken as she saw the hexgold welts all over Ixhel’s body. “Who did this to you?” she asked, black smoke rising from her vents.

Another eruption of sand burst from the bottom of the sinkhole, answering Urabrask’s question. This time, a figure emerged at the peak of the blast, quickly darting through the air towards the four. Asha had donned a pair of hexgold-rimmed wings, darting here and there through the air like a pistus fly. In her arms, she was holding Rhuk, who was visibly distressed at the height. 

“You…Phyrexian…monsters! I’m not going to stop!” Asha panted out as she dropped Rhuk, still hovering in the air. She grabbed her bundled whip from her hip and, with a flick of the wrist, unfurled it, cracking the end against the ground. Urabrask put out a protective arm in front of Ixhel, the other ready to pound its claws into Asha if she got close; Ixhel raised her wings protectively to protect Urabrask in turn. Rhuk brandished a bardiche twice as tall as he was. The two groups stood their ground, waiting for someone to take the first step, get close enough that they could deliver well-deserved death.

“Ahahaha, foolish uncompleat scum!” The gloating broke the stand-off as both parties glanced behind Urabrask. Sheoldred had clambered on top of Slobad (to his visible annoyance), grinning down at the two Mirrans with performative glee. “You’ve been so distracted by my petty minions that you’ve missed the vehicles of your doom! Behold, the dread power of the Domini, at my command. Solphim, Zopandrel, attack!”

Asha's eyes widened as she turned around. The two Domini, at Sheoldred's shrieking, turned from their work to the crowd of their lessers, out of curiosity and annoyance rather than obedience. The Mirrans, however, couldn’t tell the difference. Asha and Rhuk glanced between each other for a moment before nodding in silent agreement. They charged towards the two goliaths, prefering to risk dying fighting than to risk dying escaping. Sheoldred looked smugly at her fellows at the sound of hexgold striking against Phyrexian carapaces.

“First lesson, my inferiors: let other people’s assumptions work in your favor. If you can get away with being called a villain, don’t waste time tricking them into believing you’re a hero.” She turned to watch the ongoing combat. “Now we just have to deal with who wins. Slobad, take me closer. I want to see them suffer.”

Slobad groaned but walked closer to the fight of four - less to obey Sheoldred and more to give Urabrask and Ixhel the space to talk.

“You’re hurt again,” Urabrask said with a sigh, her fingers tracing a long welt down one of her arms.

“Mistr…Praetor, I was made to fight, to hunt and kill. I’m going to get hurt. I can take this.” 

Urabrask sniffed and pressed down hard on the welt, causing Ixhel to whine and struggle in her arms. 

“What have I told you about lying when you’re upset?” Urabrask spoke softly but with intensity; Ixhel wriggled at the heat of her breath, half out of embarrassment than discomfort.

“Is that…an order…?” Ixhel squeaked out. 

“Don’t twist my…fine.” Urabrask sighed and released her arm.” If it has to be an order, then I’m making it an order. Take care of yourself and your emotions or else. I…don’t want to lose you.”

Ixhel smiled for a moment before her face fell.

“I was going to die. I was going to die to Mirrans, in a dark hole, having failed all of my responsibilities. I was…scared. We’re not supposed to be scared.”

“Don’t worry about what you’re supposed to be. This is what you are now. And that’s okay because-”

“It’s not. I was scared of death. I was scared of dying without seeing you again. I’ve had all these…emotions since we lost Elesh. Not just me - all of us. I think there’s something really wrong with us - something beyond just this…affection, this passion . But…”

She flung herself at Urabrask, knocking the praetor into the sand, her arms around her torso. They laid there for a while, feeling the glistening oil circulate through their bodies. 

“Underneath all that? I don’t care. I don’t want to care. I think I just really want to kiss you. I don’t…understand why you don’t want me to be your minion. But I know you want to kiss me too. So if you’ll let me, I’ll do it, and we don’t have to worry about what it means.”

Urabrask stared back in silence, long enough that Ixhel began to feel self-conscious.

“No rules, just emotion. That’s all I wanted.” Before Ixhel could ask for clarification, her lips were suddenly very occupied with Urabrask’s beak. Clarification could wait.

A few yards away, the other half of the crew kept monitoring the battle.

“So, goblin,” said Sheoldred, sitting on Slobad’s shoulder, “Mirrans or Domini? Who do you think is winning here?”

“Huh. Normally the Domini, but this new metal the Mirrans came up with is cutting deeply into them, and they're both frighteningly accurate with their strikes. I don't think Zoprandel knows how to deal with a winged enemy either."

"Of course she doesn't. Unless you're too small to be noticed, using wings in the Hunters' Maze is asking to be plucked out of the sky and stripped for parts."

"Indeed. It falls to whether the white goblin can hold off Solphim long enough for the whip woman to take down Zoprandel. He’s skilled and he's fast, but Mirrans burn far more easily than we do, huh? I’d say even odds.”

“I’m rooting for the Domini. Dead Mirrans mean raw resources for me.” Sheoldred cackled to herself. “I might even be able to animate one of their corpses as a new mount.”

“I’ll root for the Mirrans then. They can be negotiated with, huh? And if not, easier to kill for Urabrask than a Dominus.” Slobad tactfully omitted the added benefit of not being on Sheoldred’s side more than he has to be.

“Whatever.”

The two watched in silence as Rhuk launched a javelin at Solphim’s head, nearly gouging her eye out. Sheoldred began to fidget with her mite legs.

“Say, about the other two. How long do you think until Urabrask screws up and drives Ixhel away for good?”

Slobad glanced over his shoulder, being the only one out of the two who had a neck.

“Right now they’re cuddling in the sand so, might be some time, huh?”

“Ugh,” Sheoldred snarled, “I thought I heard something saccharine happening behind me. What an inexperienced, lovesick fool. That idiot kzunk , she’s…she’s…” The praetor lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s going to get her trust broken. She’s not going to get what she really wants. You furnaceheads are supposed to be the ones with that piddling empathy; how are you okay with this?”

Slobad might’ve shrugged, if it didn’t risk knocking his intractable converser off her perch. 

“There was a poet among the leonin who said ‘it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all’.”

“ Uncompleat drivel used by the weak to justify their own failures,” she retorted, each word dripping with venom. “ I say that you’re making a mistake if you’re losing in the first place. You don’t let yourself look weak. You don’t let someone get their hooks into you. You can fake it if you need to, but the minute it becomes real, the minute you get truly involved, you need to take control and either get what you want or get out. Never trade control for anything .”

“Ah,” said Slobad bluntly. “The wisdom of your long rivalry with the other Thanes, huh? Or some newer wisdom?”

Sheoldred narrowed her eyes, eight crimson daggers staring out into the battle.

Slobad continued. “Empathy is accompanied with free will and wild emotions. Urabrask understands that. To allow someone to act freely means letting them act against their best interests, huh? The chaos of free will can lead to benefits otherwise unseen. The other spheres considered us compromised, but our praetor’s the one still walking on her own feet, huh?”

“Oh sure, she managed to tame her own wild angel, but where did that philosophy bring you? Or was your elf friend running away from you one of those wonderful expressions of free will?”

Slobad went silent. 

“She’s a praetor, you know,” Sheoldred continued. “Not born for it, not like Vorinclex, but with all the cunning and tenacity to hold the Maze on her own. Same as Urabrask. Do you know what makes a praetor? What unifies us as a class of superior beings? We force Phyrexia into our image and ours alone. We don’t let ourselves be swayed by our inferiors. If it comes down to it, she’ll reject you before she compromises herself. And if it comes down to it, Urabrask will bend her away from being a kzunk and towards emotion and free will and all that chaff, and if she breaks before she bends enough…”

“...The uncompleat call it ‘heartbreak’, huh?”

“Pah, hearts. As if we’d require such inefficient pumps. For us it’s just a ‘break’. And we don’t have time to get them fixed if they end up broken.”

“You’re speaking to the head salvager of the Furnace. I know more about fixing things than you, huh? I believe in them. I bet they won’t break anything that can’t be mended.”

“Fine, I’ll consider it another bet on top of our earlier one. Speaking of which, pay attention; I think we’re about to see our first casualty.”

Asha the Unforgiving 1WBR [R]

Legendary Creature - Human Berserker Rebel

Double strike, wither

Equip abilities targeting Asha cost {1} less to activate.

When Asha dies, for each Equipment that was attached to it, it deals 1 damage to each creature and each planeswalker.

3/1